Personalizing Moral Reframing in Interpersonal Conversation: A Field Experiment
Open accessPublished version of a preprint
Abstract
Organizations in the contemporary United States face substantial challenges with persuading citizens and moving them to take action. Prior research finds that citizens’ views can be changed and strengthened using frames consistent with their moral values. However, it can be difficult for organizations to tailor their appeals to individuals’ moral values given the difficulty in predicting which moral values matter to which citizens. We present a preregistered field experiment in which canvassers for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (n=52) sought to overcome this challenge by listening for individual voters’ (n=1,034) moral values and then tailoring their appeals to those moral values. In contrast to an earlier study finding no impact of long-form canvassing on abortion attitudes, we find these conversations had large effects on interest in taking action and some evidence of changes in policy attitudes. This experiment provides a template for practitioners and researchers to build on.
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Personalized moral reframing works to stimulate interest in taking action on abortion rights.
“For instance, Kalla et al. (2022) find personalized moral reframing works to stimulate interest in taking action on abortion rights.”
From How to study democratic backsliding (2024) · cites this paper as Kalla et al., 2022
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- Authors
- Kalla, J. L., Levine, A. S., & Broockman, D. E.
- Affiliations
- Yale University (US)
- Johns Hopkins University (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2022-04-01
- Volume
- 84
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 1239-1243
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W3195167555
- Cited by
- 37
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 9 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 3 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 15.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- The Journal of Politics (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Rhetoric and Communication Studies
- Keywords
- moral values, moral reframing, interpersonal persuasion, canvassing, abortion attitudes, Planned Parenthood, voter persuasion, policy attitudes
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