V.      Political Persuasion and Attitude Change

  1. Richard Perloff, The Dynamics of Persuasion: Communication and Attitudes in the 20th Century. Part II, “Changing Attitudes and Behavior,” esp. chs. 5-7, pp. 119-210.
  2. Diana C. Mutz, Paul M. Sniderman, Richard A. Brody (eds.). 1996. Political Persuasion and Attitude Change. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Ch.1, “Political Persuasion: The Birth of a New Field.”
  3. Michael D. Cobb, James H. Kuklinski. 1997. Changing Minds: Political Arguments and Political Persuasion. American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 41, No. 1. (Jan., 1997), pp. 88-121
  4. Kuklinski, James H. and Norman Hurley.  “On Hearing and Interpreting Political Messages:  A Cautionary Tale of Citizen Cue-Taking,” The Journal of Politics, Vol. 56, No. 3.  (August 1994), pp. 729-51.
  5. Kuklinski, James H., Paul J. Quirk, Jennifer Jerit, and Robert F. Rich.  “The Political Environment and Citizen Competence,” American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 2, April 2001, pp. 410-24.

Discussion Questions

 

1.       Why, according to Mutz, Sniderman, and Brody, is political persuasion so central to the study of politics? How does this jibe with Zaller and Feldman’s theory of the survey response and attitude formation?

2.       Based on Kinder and Sears from the first week’s readings, what methods are best suited to the study of political persuasion and how might the chosen methods be different for political science versus psychology or depending on what kind of persuasion one wants to study and in what political context? How have various methods in the past constrained the development of knowledge in political persuasion?

3.       Why use the term political persuasion? What can political scientists contribute to the study of political persuasion beyond the study of persuasion by psychologists?

4.       According to Perloff, why is it necessary to understand the process of persuasion, in addition to the factors (source, message and audience characteristics) that affect the likelihood of persuasion? How have different theories of persuasion progressed over the years to the elaboration likelihood model? How have the limitation of each model led to subsequent theories? What are the limitations and strengths of the elaboration likelihood model?

5.       Political source characteristics: Is authority a relevant source characteristic for political persuasion? How does context affect which characteristic is important for, say, presidential candidates in different elections? Why do political figures devote so much effort to disparaging the source and character assassination strategies? Are candidates’ personal characteristics rational criteria?

6.       What kind of “knowledge biases” are likely to operate for congressional candidates with different social and political makeup? How can political figures use knowledge bias to enhance their persuasiveness? How might you test this?  

7.       Do you agree with Roger Ailes in You Are the Message that “Being liked is the magic bullet of personal communications because they’ll forgive just about everything else you do wrong.  If they don’t like you, you can hit every rule on target and it doesn’t matter.” How is likability different for political figures—say Bush and Gore in 2000? How do candidates convey similarity?

8.       Does physical attractiveness matter for male and female political candidates? How?

9.       What is the “cautionary tale” of citizen cue-taking to which Kuklinski and Hurley refer? Are there other similar applications and extensions of this idea and design? Are there other interpretations of their findings?

10.   Critique Cobb and Kuklinski’s study. Is the “hard” versus “easy” issue distinction difficult to define and apply? Can you explain their findings with ELM? Any contemporary examples? How do opponents of various easy versus hard issue proposals exploit the weaknesses of the persuasion process? 

11.   How has the literature in political science overstated the ability of the uninformed to use heuristics to level the decisional playing field, according to Kuklinski et al? Critique their study and apply it to a topic you’re interested in.