Politicians’ ability to persuade citizens about policies depends on people’s values and priorities.

Persuading the public is often a key aim of politicians who are trying to advance their policy agendas. In new research, Matthew D. Luttig and Howard Lavine look at how policies are framed to the public and how this affects support for them. They find that certain framings – such as those which explain how a policy will lead to a gain or loss- are more likely to persuade people to support the policy if it matches with their own motivation towards preventing losses or promoting gains

Living in diverse settings may increase white opposition to race targeted policies

While racial attitudes have made enormous progress in the 50 years since the Civil Rights Act became law, racism and inequality are still powerful forces in our society. However, these negative feelings now tend to take shape in hidden, persistent resentment, rather than overt racism. In their recent research, Christopher Weber, Howard Lavine, Leonie Huddy, and Christopher Federico, find a positive relationship between whites living in high-diversity areas and negative racial stereotypes. They also show the difficulty in measuring these effects on those who are skilled at altering their behavior to comply with societal norms

Issues, party and character: The moderating role of ideological thinking on candidate evaluation

"We examine 'heuristic' and 'systematic' candidate-appraisal strategies within a presidential election context. Controlling for political knowledge, we determine whether individual differences in the capacity for ideological thought condition voters' reliance on the major determinants of candidate choice, increasing reliance on policy considerations and decreasing reliance on the heuristic cue of party identification and on perceptions of candidate character when ideological capacity is high, and exerting the opposite effect – decreasing the role of issues and increasing the role of party identification and candidate qualities – when such capacity is low. Using American National Election Studies data from the 1984–2000 period, we find that ideological thinking consistently heightens voters' reliance on issues and decreases their reliance on candidate cues, but only among voters who report being concerned about the outcome of the election. In contrast, the effect of partisanship is stable across levels of ideological thinking and concern about the campaign. We discuss the cognitive processes by which ideological thinking regulates political choice, and assert its centrality in the political decision-making process." (author's abstract

Supporters and opponents of Donald Trump respond differently to racial cues: An experimental analysis

A number of recent studies suggest that individuals who exhibit high levels of racial animosity strongly support Donald Trump, while racial liberals strongly oppose him. This paper provides a new experimental analysis of the extent to which supporters and opponents of Trump respond differently to race-related stimuli. Specifically, we examine whether attitudes toward Trump moderate the political impact of racial cues in the environment. We find that white Trump supporters randomly exposed to a black (versus a white) man in the context of soliciting their support for a housing-assistance policy were more opposed to the policy, angrier about the policy, and more likely to blame beneficiaries for their situation. The opposite pattern prevailed among whites with unfavorable opinions of Trump. Our results help provide new insight into how Trump supporters and opponents differ in their responses to the salience of race in American politics

Meta-cognition and resistance to political persuasion: evidence from a three-wave panel study

We investigate the temporal course of meta-cognition and resistance processes following exposure to counter-attitudinal information in the 2012 Presidential election. Using a unique 3-wave survey panel design, we tracked eligible voters during the last months of the 2012 campaign and experimentally manipulated exposure to negative political messages targeting Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on an online platform. As predicted, we found that politically unengaged (vs. engaged) individuals were less likely to counter-argue a message attacking their favored candidate. Resistance, in turn, led to increased attitudinal certainty, polarization, and correspondence with actual voting behavior over the course of the campaign. These findings provide the first analysis of the longitudinal effects of meta-cognitive processes underlying persuasion for real-world attitude change and behavior

Replication data for: Placing Racial Stereotypes in Context: Social Desirability and the Politics of Racial Hostility

Past research indicates that diversity at the level of larger geographic units (e.g., counties) is linked to white racial hostility. However, research has not addressed whether diverse local contexts may strengthen or weaken the relationship between racial stereotypes and policy attitudes. In a state-wide opinion survey, we find that black-white racial diversity at the zipcode level strengthens the connection between racial stereotypes and race-related policy attitudes among whites. Moreover, this effect is most pronounced among low self-monitors, individuals who are relatively immune to the effects of egalitarian social norms likely to develop within a racially diverse local area. We find that this racializing effect is most evident for stereotypes (e.g., African Americans are “violent”) that are “relevant” to a given policy (e.g., capital punishment). Our findings lend nuance to research on the political effects of racial attitudes and confirm the racializing political effects of diverse residential settings on white Americans