Support for Celebrity Political Expression and Need for Closure: An Experiment

• In Event: That's Entertainment! Celebrities, Comedy, and Crime in Political Communication

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experiment designed to understand how political ideology, psychological traits, and characteristics of a message interact to affect support for celebrity political expression. Building upon prior work demonstrating a link between individual political ideology, need for cognitive closure, and attitudes towards celebrity acts of political expression, the current project uses an experimental manipulation to randomize both the stated ideology of the celebrity and the nature of the political expression being made (in support of or in opposition to the Trump administration). The experiment was embedded within the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) (N = 1,000). Results indicate that, in general, people don’t like it when celebrities who share their political ideology go against the party line. Respondents are far more supportive of celebrities speaking out when they come from the opposing political ideology and are speaking critically of their side. With regards to political ideology, conservatives are significantly less supportive of acts of celebrity political expression than liberals, even when the ideology of the celebrity and the nature of their political expression is held constant. In addition, conservatives deem it significantly less appropriate for liberal celebrities to speak out than liberals do when asked about conservative celebrities. Finally, the hypothesized role played by need for cognitive closure in mediating these relationships is supported in the data. Not only does need for closure serve as a significant negative predictor of support for celebrity political expression (when controlling for ideology of respondent, ideology of celebrity, and whether the statement is in opposition to or supportive of Trump), but a mediation analysis indicates that at least part of the association between political ideology and support for celebrity political expression is explained by need for cognitive closure. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for political and media psychology and for normative democratic theory.

Authors

• Dannagal G. Young, University of Delaware

• Lindsay Hoffman, University of Delaware

• Jennifer L. Lambe, University of Delaware