The Deservingness Heuristic and The Strength of Political Communication

• In Event: Persuading the Public

Abstract

Why is political communication sometimes highly influential in shaping people’s opinions, while at other times it fails to engage the public? What, in other words, affect the strength of political communication? This has been characterized as “the most pressing question” (Druckman 2011) in research on political communication. In this paper, we address this question focusing on the role of psychological factors. Specifically, we integrate interdisciplinary research on cognitive biases with research on political communication strength (see also Arceneaux 2012) and argue that political communication has the strongest and most enduring effect when it contains information that resonates with automatic psychological biases.
When assessing the strength of political communication, past research has focused on people’s subjective perceptions of the persuasiveness of the message (e.g. Chong and Druckman 2007) or the immediate effect of the message on opinions (e.g. Arceneaux 2012, Aarøe 2011). While this has been a laudable starting point politics takes place over time and political elites continuously compete for the public’s attention and to set the agenda (Gaines, Kuklinski and Quirk 2007, Chong & Druckman 2010, 2012, Lecheler and de Vreese 2012, 2016). In testing our argument we therefore introduce a new comprehensive conceptualization and theorizing of communication strength including a) effects on attention and engagement b) opinion effects c) duration of opinion effects over time.
Empirically we study the issue of social welfare and political communication that appeals to the deservingness heuristic. The deservingness heuristic constitutes a deep-seated, potentially evolved psychological bias. Specifically, research on social welfare attitudes shows how thinking about welfare recipients as either lazy or as unlucky individuals, who energetically strive to find a job, colors opinions (e.g. Petersen 2012, Petersen et al. 2012, Aarøe and Petersen 2014). We predict that bias-congruent communication that matches the input conditions of the deservingness heuristic (i.e., depicts welfare recipients as lazy or unlucky) has a) stronger effects on attention and emotional engagement, b) have stronger effects on opinions, and c) have lasting effects on opinions over time.
To test these predictions, we rely on a cross-national research design including a suite of population-based laboratory and survey experiments collected in the United States and Denmark. To maximize measurement validity, we use a rich set of opinion measures and physiological markers of communication effects. The experimental treatments include highly realistic television news features that were tailor-made in close collaboration with professional and experienced journalists, photographers and actors to resemble American and Danish local TV news stories.
In unique cross-national laboratory experiments conducted with locally representative samples in the United States (n=154) and Denmark (n=176) we investigate the effect of bias-congruent deservingness information in television news features on attention and engagement as indexed by SCL. Using unobtrusive non-self-reported physiological indicators of attention and engagement we demonstrate that bias-congruent deservingness information activates attention and engagement. Second, in a comprehensive nationally representative survey experiment (n = 1400) maximizing internal validity, we compare the effect of deservingness information to three other fundamental types of social welfare frames (e.g. Cook and Barrett 1992, Gilens 2000). We demonstrate that bias-congruent deservingness frames have stronger effects on social welfare opinions than values frames, economic self-interest frames and program effectiveness frames. Third, in two-wave survey experiments fielded to nationally representative samples in the United States (n=2738) and Denmark (n=1166) we investigate the duration of the effect of television news features that employ bias-congruent deservingness information. Using highly realistic television news features maximizing ecological validity we demonstrate that the effects of bias-congruent news features endure 30 days after frame exposure. Finally, in our fourth and last set of studies we investigate under what conditions the effect of bias-congruent deservingness frames can be mitigated. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for understanding the psychological foundations of political communication strength.

Authors

• Lasse Laustsen, Aarhus University

• David J. Hendry, London School of Economics

• Lene Aarøe, Aarhus University

• Michael Bang Petersen, University of Aarhus