Communication Modality and Attitude Change In a Realistic Experiment1

In this experiment, an experimental interview with the leader of the Socialists in the Dutch Parliament was delivered via three different media: television, radio, or a newspaper presentation. We showed that the experimental interviews led, in themselves, to attitude change, but no difference was found among the three communication modalities. Moreover, no significant interaction effect was established between the political preference of the subjects (Socialist versus non-Socialist) and communication modality. Our main results do not support the assumption that for a well-known politician presently holding office, television is a less effective medium than radio or newspaper.     

The correlates and consequences of newspaper reports of research on sex differences

Correlates and consequences of newspaper accounts of research on sex differences were examined. In Study 1, articles from high-circulation newspapers were coded for the degree to which biological factors were used to explain sex differences. Results showed that political conservatism and traditional attitudes toward gender roles coded from other newspaper sections predicted greater use of biological explanations than did political liberalism and less traditional attitudes toward gender roles. In Studies 2 and 3, participants read a fictional newspaper article reporting research on a gender difference that cited either biological or sociocultural factors as explaining the difference. Results showed that exposure to biological explanations significantly increased participants' endorsement of gender stereotypes. Moreover, exposure to social explanations significantly increased participants' belief in the mutability of human behavior. Together, these studies show that political ideology influences how the popular press reports research findings and that such reporting in turn affects readers' beliefs and attitudes.     

Attitude Change in a Realistic Experiment: The Effect of Party Membership and Audience Reaction During an Interview With a Dutch Politician1

In this realistic experiment, an interview with the leader of the Liberals in the Dutch Parliament was recorded in the presence of a live audience, which reacted in a positive, negative, or neutral way. It was shown to subjects of two opposing political parties, whose attitudes were to be changed by the experimental interview. The main hypothesis, which predicted more attitude change in the positive than in the negative audience condition, could not in general be supported. The alternative audience attraction hypothesis was mainly sustained: With an audience, perceived as attractive, attitude change was greatest when the audience reacted positively and least when it reacted negatively, while for an unattractive audience the opposite effect was demonstrated.     

The Moral Foundations of Human Rights Attitudes

Human rights are claimed to be innate and based on moral principles. Human rights attitudes have been shown to be related to political ideology, but there have been few studies investigating their relationship with morality. Using moral foundations theory, we examine whether morals can predict human rights attitudes across two studies. The first study used questionnaires to show that human rights are based exclusively on individualizing moral foundations; however, increases in individualizing and decreases in binding foundations predict increases in human rights endorsement. Moral foundations also mediated the relationship between political identification and human rights. Both individualizing and binding foundations performed a role in explaining the lower endorsement of human rights by conservatives as compared to liberals. The second study used textual analysis of newspaper articles to show that human-rights-related articles contained more moral language than other articles, in particular for the individualizing foundations. Conservative newspapers had a greater use of binding foundations in human rights articles than liberal newspapers.     

Not practicing what they preached! Exploring negative spillover effects of news about ex-politicians’ hypocrisy on party attitudes,voting intentions,and political trust

ABSTRACT

Political hypocrisy – a frequent feature of contemporary politics – oftentimes occurs when politicians resign from office and then engage in behavior that is in fundamental opposition to the standpoints they originally campaigned for as incumbents. Previous research has neglected to examine negative spillover effects of news about ex-politicians’ hypocritical behavior. Drawing from the inclusion/exclusion model and the feelings-as-information model, we conducted two experiments in two different countries and used different stimuli to increase external validity. Results suggest a dual process account of scandal spillover effects (an attitudinal and emotional mechanism) revealing that hypocrisy negatively affected both attitudes and emotions toward an ex-politician. Mediation analysis further showed that evaluations in turn negatively affected attitudes and voting intentions for the party the hypocritical politician used to belong to (attitudinal spillover process). No effects on general political trust emerged. In contrast, negative emotions had no effect on party attitudes and voting intentions but decreased political trust toward politicians in general (emotional spillover process). In line with the inclusion/exclusion model, the results help to explain inconsistent findings in previous studies that did not account for the suggested dual process account of spillover effects and underline the eroding effects of hypocrisy.     

Between Remembering and Forgetting the Years of Political Violence: Psychosocial Impact of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru

This article analyzes the association between knowledge of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), evaluation of TRC's achievements, experience of victimization, attitudes toward remembering and forgetting past political violence, perceptions of socioemotional climate (SEC), belief in forgiveness and attitudes toward violence in Peru based on a study conducted in three Peruvian cities with different rates of victimization due to political violence during 1980–2000 (n = 1200). Results showed that a positive attitude toward remembering the past of political violence was predominant and related to a positive evaluation of TRC's achievements. Attitude toward remembering also has an ambivalent collective effect increasing both positive and negative SECs, and it is less accepted by victims of political violence. On the other hand, attitude toward forgetting is less accepted by participants, and it also has an ambivalent effect by increasing positive and negative SECs. Attitude toward forgetting has more societal costs, since it is related to attitudes toward violence and decreased knowledge and a positive evaluation of TRC. In general, findings suggest that remembering traumatic events has an emotional cost, but also it is shown that remembering seems to be more beneficial for society in the long‐term than forgetting.     

Attitudinal effects of the use of evaluatively biased language

In an experiment to study the effects on attitudes of requiring subjects to use evaluatively biased language, 84 schoolchildren aged 13–14 years completed a questionnaire to measure their attitudes on the issue of adult authority over teenagers, before and after writing an essay on this issue in which they were either required to incorporate words from a list all of which implied a positive evaluation of a pro-authority position or a negative evaluation of an anti-authority position (pro-bias condition), or required to incorporate words where the implied evaluations were reversed (anti-bias condition), or were given no words to incorporate (control condition). Relative to controls, pro-bias subjects showed as a shift towards a more pro position and anti-bias subjects became more anti irrespective of their initial attitudes (pro-bias versus anti-bias comparison, p<.01). However, when tested 6 days later most of this effect had disappeared, particularly in the case of subjects whose initial attitudes were least pro. At this final session, subjects also rated attitude statements on the issue in terms of scales constructed from the pro-bias and anti-bias word lists. In accordance with previous research, the more pro subjects' attitudes, the more they showed greater polarization of judgement on the pro-bias than the anti-bias scales (p<.000l). It is concluded that a person's attitude may be related to the kind of evaluative language he will apply to an issue, and that when a person is induced to use language implying a particular evaluation of an issue, he may change his attitude, at least in the short term, so as to be more congruent with the language he has used.     

Sources of politico-economic attitudes: students’ introspections

Our aim is to shed more light on university students’ sources of attitudes towards the market economy, social inequality, and the responsibilities of the state. Analyzing survey data of almost 500 students at a German university, we identify those sources the subjects report to be important in the process of forming their politico-economic attitudes. We explore the differences between our sample of local students and the German General Social Survey, as well as the characteristics of subjects expressing no opinion. We also examine whether the sources which were reported to be important significantly contribute to the prediction of conservative political attitudes, concentrating specifically on the attitude effects of economic education.     

Ideological self-schemata and schematically induced attitude consistency

This paper reports the results of a study which attempted to influence the level of expressed political attitude consistency by activating a “liberal-conservative” schema. The primary prediction was that attitudes elicited under direction of this general schema would be more mutually consistent than attitudes expressed without schematic direction. The results supported this prediction, but only for subjects who were “ideologically self-schematic,” that is, those subjects who defined themselves in adjectives which are characteristic of liberals or conservatives or who rated themselves on the extreme ends of a liberal-conservative self-rating scale. The results are interpreted as supportive of the generality of the effects of differences in the accessibility of specific constructs produced either by chronic individual differences or by trait priming.     

The Waffle Phenomenon: Negative Evaluations of Those Who Shift Attitudinally1

The past two presidential campaigns have been filed with charges that the Democratic nominee “changed his mind” on various issues. The present research explored the possibility that negative evaluations may be produced by attitude change per se. In the first experiment, subjects responded to a stranger whose attitudes remained stable or who changed his attitudes over a period of two months vs. one year. Individuals who changed their attitudes were generally evaluated more negatively than those whose attitudes remained stable; the amount of time over which the change occurred produced no effect. A second expcriment sought to determine if the direction of change (toward increased or decreased similarity with subjects) influenced evaluations of a stranger. Attitude change which resulted in decreased similarity was rated most negatively. Even when a stranger changed his attitudes in the direction of greater similarity with subjects, however, he was still regarded as less decisive, less reliable, and a worse leader than was an individual with stable attitudes. This negative evaluation of attitude change was labeled the “waffle phenomenon”, and the implications for political candidates were discussed.     

Newspaper coverage of injuries affecting the Spanish surname population in two counties in Colorado

The present study assessed newspaper reports of injuries affecting individuals with Spanish surnames and compared newspaper reports to hospital injury discharge data in two counties in Colorado. Newspaper reports came from 12 daily and weekly newspapers. Hospital discharge data were obtained from the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment. Motor vehicle crashes, assault and legal intervention, and suicide and suicidal acts were counted. A higher proportion of people with Spanish surnames were reported in newspapers than expected based on the hospital discharge data. Motor vehicle injuries were far more frequent based on hospital discharge data than in newspaper reports. Assault and legal intervention injuries were similarly represented by Hispanic ethnicity and absolute numbers in both reporting sources. Suicide and suicidal acts were not often reported in newspapers relative to hospital discharge data; however, the proportion of Hispanics was not significantly different. These findings suggest that the use of newspapers for surveillance of injuries may be helpful, but should not be used in the absence of other data sources.     

Political Attitudes and the Processing of Misinformation Corrections

Misinformation often continues to influence people’s memory and inferential reasoning after it has been retracted; this is known as the continued influence effect (CIE). Previous research investigating the role of attitude‐based motivated reasoning in this context has found conflicting results: Some studies have found that worldview can have a strong impact on the magnitude of the CIE, such that retractions are less effective if the misinformation is congruent with a person’s relevant attitudes, in which case the retractions can even backfire. Other studies have failed to find evidence for an effect of attitudes on the processing of misinformation corrections. The present study used political misinformation—specifically fictional scenarios involving misconduct by politicians from left‐wing and right‐wing parties—and tested participants identifying with those political parties. Results showed that in this type of scenario, partisan attitudes have an impact on the processing of retractions, in particular (1) if the misinformation relates to a general assertion rather than just a specific singular event and (2) if the misinformation is congruent with a conservative partisanship.     

Social categorization and attitude change

Two experiments were carried out investigating the effect of categorization on attitude change. It was predicted that the division of a number of individuals into two subgroups (categorization), in such a way that initial attitudes correlate with subgroup membership, would lead to accentuation of attitudinal differences between subgroups. It was further predicted that an identical distribution of initial attitudes without superimposed categorization would lead to convergence of attitude positions. In experiment 1, the effect of a male-female classification on attitude change was studied. It was indeed found that subjects changed their attitudes in the direction opposite to the position of the outgroup (intergroup attitude differentiation), but only for groups who were initially more extreme than the comparison group. In the control condition (no categorization), conformity effects were observed. In experiment 2, an antagonistic intergroup setting was induced. In this situation, strong intergroup attitude differentiation effects were observed, which were not affected by the magnitude of the initial intergroup discrepancy. In the control condition, subjects did not show conformity to the overall group mean, but maintained their initial noncentral attitude position.     

The time for doing is not the time for change: effects of general action and inaction goals on attitude retrieval and attitude change

Implicit in many informal and formal principles of psychological change is the understudied assumption that change requires either an active approach or an inactive approach. This issue was systematically investigated by comparing the effects of general action goals and general inaction goals on attitude change. As prior attitudes facilitate preparation for an upcoming persuasive message, general action goals were hypothesized to facilitate conscious retrieval of prior attitudes and therefore hinder attitude change to a greater extent than general inaction goals. Experiment 1 demonstrated that action primes (e.g., "go," "energy") yielded faster attitude report than inaction primes (e.g., "rest," "still") among participants who were forewarned of an upcoming persuasive message. Experiment 2 showed that the faster attitude report identified in Experiment 1 was localized on attitudes toward a message topic participants were prepared to receive. Experiments 3, 4, and 5 showed that, compared with inaction primes, action primes produced less attitude change and less argument scrutiny in response to a counterattitudinal message on a previously forewarned topic. Experiment 6 confirmed that the effects of the primes on attitude change were due to differential attitude retrieval. That is, when attitude expression was induced immediately after the primes, action and inaction goals produced similar amounts of attitude change. In contrast, when no attitude expression was induced after the prime, action goals produced less attitude change than inaction goals. Finally, Experiment 7 validated the assumption that these goal effects can be reduced or reversed when the goals have already been satisfied by an intervening task.     

Implicit Representations of Political Leaders: A Multidimensional Analysis

Implicit cognitive representations of 20 salient political personalities (10 domestic, 10 foreign) were studied in two samples (N₁= 121; N₂= 129) over a 1-year interval. The aim of the study was to elaborate multidimensional models of voting preference by (a) representing the cognitive dimensions used by subjects in perceiving politicians, (b) contrasting perceptions of domestic and foreign leaders, (c) evaluating the effects of time, and (d) assessing individual differences between subjects on political perception. Judgments were analyzed by Carroll and Chang's (1970) Individual Differences Multidimensional Scaling (INDSCAL) procedure. Results showed that three implicit dimensions, evaluation, ideology , and leadership qualities, underlied perceptions of both domestic and foreign politicians. There were greater changes in perceptions of foreign and left-of-center leaders over the year than in judgments of domestic and right-of-center leaders; and individual differences such as attitudes, personality, and cognitive style were also significantly related to cognitive representations of politicians. Results were discussed in terms of their implications for predictive models of voting behavior, and the use of these methods in large-scale political surveys and polls is suggested.     

On the predictive validity of attitudes: The roles of direct experience and confidence1

Previous research has demonstrated that behavior is more accurately predicted from attitudes formed via direct, behavioral interaction with the attitude object than from attitudes developed via indirect, nonbehavioral experience. The present research examined the hypothesis that the confidence with which an attitude is held may be a mediating variable in the observed relationship between the manner of attitude formation and attitude-behavior consistency. In the first experiment, it was demonstrated that subjects who formed their attitudes through direct experience held those attitudes more confidently and behaved more consistently with those attitudes than did subjects who formed their attitudes through indirect experience. In the second experiment, it was found that, regardless of the manner of attitude formation, subjects who were led to believe that they held their attitudes confidently displayed greater attitude-behavior consistency than did subjects led to believe that they held their attitudes with little confidence. Taken together, the results suggest that it may be fruitful to view confidence both as a variable which mediates the effect of the manner of attitude formation on attitude-behavior consistency and as one which, independent of how an attitude is formed, acts as a determinant of attitude-behavior consistency.     

Exploring the Valence‐Framing Effect: Negative Framing Enhances Attitude Strength

In his now‐classic research on inoculation theory, McGuire (1964 ) demonstrated that exposing people to an initial weak counterattitudinal message could lead to enhanced resistance to a subsequent stronger counterattitudinal message. More recently, research on the valence‐framing effect ( Bizer & Petty, 2005 ) demonstrated an alternative way to make attitudes more resistant. Simply framing a person's attitude negatively (i.e., in terms of a rejected position such as anti‐Democrat) led to more resistance to an attack on that attitude than did framing the same attitude positively (i.e., in terms of a preferred position such as pro‐Republican). Using an election context, the current research tested whether valence framing influences attitude resistance specifically or attitude strength more generally, providing insight into the effect's mechanism and generalizability. In two experiments, attitude valence was manipulated by framing a position either negatively or positively. Experiment 1 showed that negatively framed attitudes were held with more certainty than were positively framed attitudes. In Experiment 2, conducted among a representative sample of residents of two U.S. states during political campaigns, negatively framed attitudes demonstrated higher levels of attitude certainty and attitude‐consistent behavioral intentions than did attitudes that were framed positively. Furthermore, the effect of valence framing on behavioral intentions was mediated by attitude certainty. Valence framing thus appears to be a relatively low‐effort way to impact multiple features associated with strong attitudes.     

Drifting Further Apart? How Exposure to Media Portrayals of Muslims Affects Attitude Polarization

Political discourses about Muslim immigration in the media and on social networking sites (SNSs) are highly contentious and have the potential to further polarize societal segments, which may ultimately harm democratic processes. Especially on SNSs, politicians and citizens can circumvent journalistic filters often resulting in blatant and emotionally charged content. Using a two-wave panel design (N = 559), we investigated how positive and negative portrayals of Muslims in traditional media outlets and on SNSs influence anti-Muslim immigration attitudes among people who either agree or disagree with the encountered information. Our findings indicate that exposure to negative portrayals further reinforces anti-Muslim immigration attitudes among those who agree with the encountered information. In contrast, for those who disagree with the negative information, a backfire effect emerges, showing that anti-Muslim attitudes even decrease. This effect occurs for both SNSs and traditional media. Positive information about Muslims did not result in attitude polarization.     

God Versus Party: Competing Effects on Attitudes Concerning Criminal Punishment,National Security,and Military Service

We explore how images of God interact with political party to predict attitudes concerning the appropriate role of government in both criminal punishment and national security. Using the second wave of the Baylor Religion Survey (2007), we analyze the extent to which beliefs regarding God's moral judgment moderate the influence of party affiliation on opinions about the death penalty, fighting terrorism, punishing criminals, serving in the military, and U.S. involvement in the Iraq War. Specifically, we find that Democrats who believe in a judgmental God tend to support more conservative policies. In fact, attitudes converge such that the effects of party membership are erased if rival partisans both believe in a judgmental moral authority.