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.)”

“Elite influence can over-power political ideology (Cohen, 2003; although not in every context, Bullock, 2011).”

“Error bars are 95% HPDI. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01551-7 have randomized substantive policy information alongside exposure to party cues 25,37,41–43 , but their designs omitted a control group in which people received no information.”

“Even those otherwise sceptical of the role of party influence on mass opinion (e.g. Bullock 2011) acknowledge that on multifaceted issues like immigration elite cues may be more important than policy information.”

“…source cue effects have been widely studied in the United States, partisan cues are by far the best-studied heuristic in political communication (Borges & Clarke, 2008; Brader & Tucker, 2010; Bullock, 2011; Druckman, 2001b; Kam, 2005; and Slothuus & Vreese, 2010, to name a few studies).”

“…processing adopted for a relatively new issue can differ from that adopted for a more familiar topic (Arceneaux 2008; Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011; Peterson 2017), the study’s findings cannot be automatically generalised to EU issues that are already prominent in the public debate.”

“Others are more sceptical (e.g. Lau and Redlawsk 2001) and some have pointed out that citizens do not only rely on elite cues when forming political preferences (Bullock 2011) and that they even reject cues that disagree with existing attitudes (Darmofal 2005).”

“36 E.g., Bullock 2011; Kam 2005; Rahn 1993; Schneider and Jacoby 2005; Zaller 1992.”

“Treatment effects varied across issues, with party cue effects just around 3 percentage points on issues where most participants knew party positions in advance (also see Bullock 2011, 509).”

“…we predict that respondents in condition II should be more likely to support the proposed amendment than respondents assigned to condition I. Past literature provides ample evidence of the effects of partisan cues on public opinion (Bullock 2011; Lupia 1994; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Zaller 1992).”

“Furthermore, when citizens have a sound informational basis for their expressed opinions, partisan cues appear to have modest effects on expressed citizen preferences (Bullock, 2011).”

“Indeed, several studies find that when non-government sources supply neutral policy information, the information can attenuate the effects of partisan elite cues (Bullock 2011; Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Guisinger and Saunders 2017).”

“However, recent studies have argued that in some cases citizens’ policy preferences can play a key role in shaping Americans’ political assessments (Boudreau and MacKenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011; Christenson and Kriner, 2016).”

“…e of th e in di vi du al us er an d is no t to be di ss em in at ed br oa dl y. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General © 2018 American Psychological Association 2018, Vol. 147, No. 9, 1382–1399 0096-3445/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000489 1382 agenda (Bullock, 2011; Burke, 1774).”

“Past evidence of the public’s reliance on policy information while also exposed to cues, albeit less powerful ones, informs this expected attenuating effect (Boudreau & MacKenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011).”

“The large source effects that often appear in experimental studies may likewise be taken more as an indication of the weakness of the attitudes affected than of the power of cues (e.g., Bullock 2011; Cohen 2003; Milburn 1987; Tomz and Sniderman 2005).”

“According to the theory of social identity, people generate their opinions largely affected by elite cues or credible messengers from their own social and political groups (Bullock, 2011).”

“This is usually shown in laboratory or survey experiments where the subjects are randomly selected to undergo different treatments in which party cues are manipulated along with policy issues (Brader and Tucker, 2012; Brader et al., 2012; Bullock, 2011; Coan et al., 2008; Kam, 2005; Merolla et al., 2016; Samuels and Z…”

“Strong past evidence of people predominantly relying on source cues over policy content in opinion formation (as summarized by Bullock, 2011) motivates this hypothesis.”

“The top row shows that changing Obama’s position from supporting to opposing the strikes reduces support by 30 percentage points (p .05), conferring an effect that is typical of party cue studies (see Bullock 2011, 509).”

“…need to either revert to the more demanding method of systematic processing, or avoid the costs of acquiring information by opting out and adopting no position at all (Bullock, 2011; Druckman, Peterson, & Slothuus, 2013; Krosnick, 2001; Lau & Redlawsk, 2006; Lupia & McCubbins, 1998; Popkin, 1991).”

“Second, as we know from political psychology research, partisans’ cue taking might not only differ depending on the individual level traits (Kam 2005; Bullock, 2011) but also on parties’ attributes such as party age, government status, and the ideological clarity of the party’s cues (Brader and…”

“A cue has been defined as ‘a message that people may use to infer other information and, by extension, to make decisions’ (see i.e., Bullock, 2011, 497).”

“An important point to make here is that party cues are not all encompassing, but that individuals also, to some extent, employ other decision principles, such as evaluating policy information when forming policy attitudes (Boudreau & MacKenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011; Slothuus, 2010).”

“…policymakers do respond to mass opinion rather than just elite opinion (Enns, 2015; Leighley & Oser, 2018; Mishler & Sheehan, 1993; Stimson, MacKuen, & Erikson, 1995; Wlezien, 1995) and that the mass public is able to develop opinions independent of elite influence (Bullock, 2011; Friedman, 2012).”

“While party identification may be one dimension by which the public weights the credibility of foreign policy information, it need not be the only or even the most salient heuristic they use (Bullock, 2011; Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus, 2013).”

“, Grossmann & Hopkins, 2015) in their responsiveness to party cues and policy details (Bullock, 2011).”

“Research also suggests that negative interactions with the police and high-profile instances of police misconduct can induce cynicism among black citizens (Kirk and Papachristos 2011; see also Desmond et al. 2016).”

“…(see Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996; Petty, Briñol, Loersch, & McCaslin, 2009) has been investigated in a number of political contexts and has been found to be a unique predictor of political outcomes (e.g., see Ahlering, 1987; Arceneaux & Vander Wielen, in press; Bullock, 2011).”

“…shortcut for making voting decisions: by merely looking at candidates' party affiliations, partisan voters get information about the alignment of the candidates' program with their values and interests (Bullock, 2011; Gant & Luttbeg, 1987; Lau & Redlawsk, 2001; Mérola & Hitt, 2015; Rahn, 1993).”

“In a recent study Bullock (2011) found that for one set of voters the estimated effects of content was identical for one subgroup whether or not they were exposed to cues; for another group the effect of content was augmented by the cues (this latter effect was weakly significant).”

“Many studies have focused on the influence that parties exert on their own supporters (Brader and Tucker 2012; Bullock 2011; Steenbergen, Edwards, and de Vries 2007).”

“The power of such heuristic processing in the formation of political attitudes has been shown in a wide range of settings, especially when it comes to complex policy questions on which citizens hold limited information (Bullock, 2011).”

“Previous studies have examined the influence of partisan cues on attitude formation (e.g. Bullock, 2011; Goren, Federico, & Kittilson, 2009), but their influence on political learning is largely uninvestigated.”

“Consistent with this, there is evidence that voters can accurately update their beliefs in light of policy information, even when that information is accompanied by party cues or is inconsistent with partisan priors (Boudreau and MacKenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011).”

“However, it is important to note that individuals do not automatically accept any political message they receive, but, when motivated to do so, are able to critically evaluate the contents of a message (Boudreau & MacKenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011; Slothuus & de Vreese, 2010).”

“Party cues “ link a party to a stand on an issue ” (Bullock 2011, 497).”

“Cues subtly communicate the stance that a political party or figure has taken on an issue, whereas frames affect how people think about those issues (Bullock, 2011; Chong & Druckman, 2007; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987).”

“Manipulating the in-party (i.e., the party one supports) and out-party (i.e., a party one does not support) is a daunting task compared with studies conducted in political contexts in which there are only two political parties (Bakker, Lelkes, & Malka, 2020; Bullock, 2011; Kam, 2005).”

“…(Ura and Ellis 2012), biased media presentations of politically charged issues (Menjívar and Kil 2002, 160), and a notably uninformed electorate (Bullock 2011; Lupia 2016).13 In this context, citizens’ attitudes are often shaped by their political ideological identities rather than by their…”

“Bullock (2011) argues that the provision of information that signals the ideological content of a policy can have a larger effect on attitudes toward that policy than the provision of the two major parties’ positions.”

“…employ a cue-based form of mass communication that – if previous research holds – is likely to be more persuasive and harder to contradict than the Democrats’ factual and straightforward message-based approach (Iyengar and Valentino 2000, Bullock 2011, Brulle et al. 2012, Dahlstrom 2014).”

“The availability of information is another important determinant [178,179], but is often lacking on environmental issues.”

“For example, the electorate takes cues from party positions and policy information and the effect varies with levels of disagreement among parties, party unity, issue salience, and party attachment (Ray 2003; Hooghe and Marks 2005; Bullock 2011).”

“As a result, the public responds to new information provided by elites about the consequences of particular policies by moving their policy preferences to be more consistent with that suggested by the new information (Bullock 2011; Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus 2013; Nicholson 2011).”

“More specifically, whereas some research on motivated reasoning has found that conservatives engage in motivated reasoning more often than liberals (Barberá, Jost, Nagler, Tucker, & Bonneau, 2015; Bullock, 2011; Garrett, 2009; Iyengar, Hahn, Krosnick, & Walker, 2008; Lavine, Lodge, & Freitas, 2005; MacCoun & Paletz, 2…”

“They tend to be more attuned to partisan cues (Bullock 2011; Carmichael et al. 2017), more politically selective in their exposure to information (Rodriguez et al.”

“…studies have investigated the effect of policy information, i.e., explicit information about the provisions and immediate consequences of policies (Bullock 2011, p. 497), on individual opinion formation (see Arceneaux, 2008; Boudreau & MacKenzie, 2014; Bullock, 2011, Nicholson, 2011, Slothuus &…”

“While these audience members may have a partisan motivation to discount the counter-explanation (Lodge and Taber 2006), this does not mean they are immune to counter-argumentation as strong arguments can overcome partisan interpretations in some contexts (Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011).”

“Partisan sponsorship of policies may help voters to orient themselves in the ideological space (Bullock 2011; Sniderman and Stiglitz 2012).”

“Informed voters in the United States for example, have been shown to be able to detract from their preferred party’s position when exposed to increased information (Boudreau and MacKenzie 2014; Bullock 2011).”