Elite Influence on Public Opinion in an Informed Electorate

“(Some authors have already made a start: e.g., Druckman 2001, 72n11; Iyengar et al. 2008, 195; and Jost et al. 2003.)”

“…show that the effectiveness of frames regarding welfare and trade policy depends on the party to which the frames are attributed; specifically, participants are more persuaded by frames from their own party than by identical frames from the opposing party (also see Kam, 2005; cf., Bullock, 2011).”

“…factors that moderate the likelihood of partisan motivated reasoning including political sophistication, opinion strength, message repetition, information search, and the level of elite polarization in a given context (e.g., see Taber and Lodge 2006 3 ; Bullock 2011; Druckman et al. 2012, 2013).”

“Second, when parties lead opinion, how do parties work to influence opinions? Much of the existing literature sees party identification as the basis of public opinion formation, but scholars have presented a number of distinct ways of conceiving parties, and there is little agreement on how parties influence citizens’…”

“This would be particularly worrisome for research using ideology or partisanship as a moderator of experimental treatment effects (e.g., Bullock, 2011; Druckman et al., 2013; Nyhan and Reifler, 2010) or examining psychological differences between liberals and conservatives (e.g., Feldman and…”

“But party labels can also be thought of as cues, and favoring a policy supported by people one agrees with on many other issues can be thought of as a sensible heuristic strategy rather than a bias (Bullock, 2011; Leeper & Slothuus, 2014).”

“…measure of need for cognition, as evidenced by several studies that have simply selected the highest loading items from the longer versions (e.g., Bullock, 2011; Davis, Severy, Kraus, & Whitaker, 1993), or studies using an unvalidated two-item measure (Bakker & Lelkes, 2016; Bizer, Krosnick,…”

“We then presented respondents with a variety of statements about this bill to test how the public would respond to various aspects of a bill [23].”

“In Bullock (2011), subjects also receive a large amount of policy information (16 paragraphs).”

“The literature has been testing, with mixed findings, whether and when cues and frames work (see e.g. Bullock 2011).”

“We included these party cues to examine the robustness of the results to including party labels given the increased attention to these heuristics in the political science literature in recent years (Bullock, 2011; Druckman et al., 2013; Nicholson, 2012).”

“From this perspective, a person can become misinformed 7 broad literature showing that citizens can be responsive to new information (e.g., Ahler & Sood 2018, Bullock 2011, Druckman et al. 2013, Feldman et al. 2015, Hill 2017, Redlawsk et al. 2010).”

“We did not offer a prediction regarding gender differences but this finding appears consistent with evolutionary psychology research that suggests women are more discriminating than men in both long and short term relationships (see Buss 1998).”

“The size of these effects exceed the party influence found in many experimental studies (Bullock 2011; Clifford, Leeper and Rainey 2019), despite we studied highly salient issues with clear ideological connotations where experimental studies often find smaller effects (Arceneaux and Vander Wielen…”

“…groups or, similarly, vary signals that shift the meaning of various issue positions by framing them differently (e.g., Johnston et al., 2017; for more general examples, see Bullock, 2011; Cohen, 2003; Druckman et al., 2013; Goren, Federico, & Kittilson, 2009; Kam, 2005; Malka & Lelkes, 2010).”

“Even when the influence seems to be genuine, it mostly happens when people do not have more accurate information to ground their opinions on (Bullock, 2011; Druckman, Peterson, & Slothuus, 2013).”

“…allows for a parsimonious, unobtrusive measure of processing effort during opinion formation, rather than relying on participants’ post-hoc self-report (e.g., Griffin et al., 2002), which may be inaccurate and/or biased by social desirability concerns (Burdein et al., 2006; Petersen et al., 2013).”

“Others argue that partisan cues mainly serve as substitutes for relevant information such as political background and policy preferences (Bullock, 2011; Lau and Redlawsk, 2001).”

“…up their mind on new policies by focusing attention on their preferred party and simply following the party line (and, hence, invoke the decision-making rule: “if my party is in favor, then I am in favor”) (Bullock, 2011; see Petersen, Skov, Serritzlew, & Ramsøy, 2013 for a critical discussion).”

“In fact, past research suggests that partisan cues are less powerful in high-information environments (Bullock 2011; Peterson 2017).”

“E.2), effect sizes that are comparable to those observed in previous cue studies (Bullock 2011; Kam 2005).12 In the samemodel, citizens with stronger partisan social identities were more supportive of the policies, while those with higher levels of cognitive resources (CRT, NfC, and latent…”

“1994; Rahn, 1993), recent work argues to the contrary—policy information does influence attitudes (Bullock, 2011), and this information can counteract partisan biases (Jessee, 2010).”

“This following could take place for several reasons, including the use of party or candidate positions as a heuristic (Bullock 2011; Zaller 1992), attachment to a party based on social group identification (Converse 1964), conformity to the positions of an individual’s preferred political “team,”…”

“Further, the studies experimentally manipulate the salience of partisanship in the minds of respondents by priming partisanship through simple cues (Bullock, 2011; e.g., Klar, 2013).”

“1960; Goren 2002; Jerit and Barabas 2012), and with few exceptions (Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011), research suggests that the citizenry follow elite party endorsements even at the expense of relevant information (Cohen 2003; Lau and Redlawsk 2001; Rahn 1993).”

“Some have argued that the effect is limited to contrived and tightly controlled laboratory situations (Boudreau & Mackenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011; Bullock, Gerber, Hill, & Huber, 2015).”

“There is an increasing awareness that party cue effects might differ across countries (Brader, Tucker, & Duell, 2013; Bullock, 2011, pp. 511–512) but this concern is less relevant here as I compare the effects of different party cues within the same country.”

“Party cues play an important role in political behavior, often shaping the expression of political values (Goren, Federico, & Kittilson, 2009) and policy preferences (Cohen, 2003; Rahn, 1993), especially when policy information is scant (Bullock, 2011).”

“Common heuristics used by citizens when forming opinions about political matters include elite communication and party identification (Green et al. 2002; Bullock 2011; Lau and Redlawsk 2001).”

“Drawing on the literature on how political parties affect public opinion (e.g.,Cohen 2003; Bullock 2011; Druckman et al. 2013; Leeper & Slothuus 2014), I develop three hypotheses that distinguish between the effect of the arguments conveyed by interest groups and the effect of interest groups as…”

“Likewise, while partisans may attempt to dismiss incongruent information, this process has its limits and sufficient conflicting information can undermine partisan biases in information processing (Bullock, 2011; Kunda, 1990; Redlawsk et al., 2010).”

“Prior research has documented the persuasive impact of parties (Bullock 2011), politicians (Carmines and Kuklinski 1990), the media (Iyengar and Kinder 1987), advocacy groups (Arceneaux and Kolodny 2009), and courts (Bartels and Mutz 2009).”

“Similarly, Bullock (2011) finds that while the availability and type of policy information is central to opinion formation, party cues also play an important role in shaping preferences over specific policies.”

“…on opinion (Cohen, 2003 ; Rahn, 1993 ) or whether policy information, political awareness, and other factors condition the effectiveness of party versus issue cues (Boudreau & MacKenzie, 2014 ; Bullock, 2011 ; Druckman, Peterson, & Slothuus 2013 ; Nicholson 2011 ; Slothuus & de Vreese, 2010 ).”

“40 E.g., Gelman 2009.”

“The research on endorsement effects focuses on celebrities, members of the political elite, interest groups or political parties (Arceneaux and Kolodny, 2009; Bullock, 2011; Dewan et al., 2013; Druckman et al., 2010; Smets and Isernia, 2014).”

“Indeed, for some scholars, political parties are key actors in the setting of the agenda and are agents of political mobilization, as citizens tend to adopt the messages and opinions of their preferred political parties (Cohen 2003; Bullock 2011).”

“Scholars have begun to identify conditions under which persuasion is moreor less likely tooccur(Bullock2011;Dilliplane2014; Feldman 2011a, 2011b; Levendusky 2013b), as well as under which partisan media may provoke a backlash against theperspectivebeingadvocated(Zaller1992), the outlet presenting…”

“As Bullock (2011) found with a similar design to our 2009 experiment, people use information about roll-call votes, when it is available, to evaluate their legislators.”

“At the same time, the results of two experiments involving large samples of adult partisans revealed that Republicans were more sensitive than Democrats to partisan cues, whereas Democrats were more attentive than Republicans to information about policy content (Bullock, 2011).”

“Another weakness of the present study is that it does not examine the role of partisan cues (e.g., Bullock, 2011).”

“Although spillover effects may be rare in practice, partisan cue experiments from multiple countries suggest that it is possible to change attitudes by connecting them to a belief system via party (Bakker et al., 2020; Brader et al., 2020; Bullock, 2011; Cohen, 2003; Kam, 2005) or ideological identities (Malka & Lelke…”

“…drive partisan choices (e.g., Adams 2012; Budge, Crewe and Farlie 1976), an influential literature—based primarily on studies from the United States—has found that differential updating is strongly moderated by partisanship (e.g., Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011; Healy and Malhotra 2013).”

“…there is an ongoing scholarly debate about the extent of political knowledge (e.g., Gibson & Caldeira, 2009; Hochschild & Einstein, 2015; Luskin & Bullock, 2011; Mondak, 1999; Prior & Lupia, 2008), overall the extant research suggests that a large enough fraction does not know certain political…”

“In recent decades, political scientists have put the second claim to test and found significant partisan bias in both factual and normative matters (for overviews, see Bullock, 2011; Leeper & Slothuus, 2014).”

“In those studies individuals evaluate a single policy proposal or candidate without the presentation of a clear, out-party alternative (e.g. Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011; Arceneaux 2008).”

“Finally, as our treatment involves contestation over policy issues, it is possible that reactions are based on policy differences rather than partisan identity (see Bullock, 2011).”

“The substantive size of the effects is notable, especially for a new party system (Bullock, 2011).”

“…help simplify the political world, providing guidance on which candidates and issues to endorse (e.g., Arceneaux 2007; Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011; Nicholson 2012), which facts to believe and how to interpret them (Bartels 2002; Bisgaard 2015; Gaines et al. 2007; Jerit and Barabas…”

“Respondents who participated in both survey waves remained in the same experimental condition for both periods, 9See Bullock (2011) on “cues.” e.g., those who saw no preamble (control condition) in the pre-election wave also saw nothing in the post-election wave.”

“Recent research demonstrates that party labels often serve as useful heuristics that help cognitively constrained citizens deal with a complex policy environment (e.g., Bullock 2011; Jackman and Sniderman 2002; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Popkin 1994).”