The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 59 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Learning and Opinion Change, Not Priming: Reconsidering the Priming Hypothesis
Abstract
According to numerous studies, campaign and news media messages can alter the importance individuals place on an issue when evaluating politicians, an effect called priming. Research on priming revived scholarly interest in campaign and media effects and implied, according to some, that campaigns and the media can manipulate voters. There are, however, alternative explanations for these priming findings, alternatives that previous studies have not fully considered. In this article, I reanalyze four cases of alleged priming, using panel data to test priming effects against these alternatives. Across these four cases, I find little evidence of priming effects. Instead, campaign and media attention to an issue creates the appearance of priming through a two‐part process: Exposing individuals to campaign and media messages on an issue (1) informs some of them about the parties’ or candidates’ positions on that issue. Once informed, (2) these individuals often adopt their preferred party's or candidate's position as their own.
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Cites
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Cited by
Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote
Mutz, D. C. (2018) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1718155115 · Cited by 1,236
Brulle, R. J., Carmichael, J., & Jenkins, J. C. (2012) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-012-0403-y · Cited by 1,123
Elite Influence on Public Opinion in an Informed Electorate
BULLOCK, J. G. (2011) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055411000165 · Cited by 777
Political Trust in a Cynical Age
Citrin, J., & Stoker, L. (2018) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-050316-092550 · Cited by 722
Carmichael, J. T., & Brulle, R. J. (2017) · Environmental Politics · doi:10.1080/09644016.2016.1263433 · Cited by 409
Metadata
- Authors
- Lenz, G. S.
- Venue
- American Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2009-09-18
- Volume
- 53
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 821-837
- ISSN
- 0092-5853 (ISSN-L)
- 1540-5907
- OpenAlex
- W2129642147
- Cited by
- 419
- References
- 59
- FWCI
- 91.56
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.