How Party Reputations Change the Way Citizens Understand Policy
APSA award winner: Paul Lazarsfeld Best Paper Award 2023
with Rune Slothuus and Martin Bisgaard
Party cues can shape policy opinions, but do party cues also change how citizens understand the policy itself? We theorize and show that citizens use parties’ policy reputations—preexisting knowledge of what the parties stand for and whom they represent—to infer the content and consequences of policy proposals. Across six experiments from the United States and Denmark, we consistently find that switching the party sponsor of a policy changes the policy that citizens see before them. Our theory and findings offer a new perspective on party cues as a rich source of policy information, not merely a trigger of partisan sentiment.
Resentment or Reputation? Why Citizens Oppose Out-Party Policies
with Rune Slothuus and Love Christensen
Partisan animosity, a growing literature claims, shapes public opinion. A particularly striking finding comes from studies of out-party cues: In numerous experiments across various countries, researchers have found that citizens support the same policy less if sponsored by an out-party. This finding has given rise to a now common portrayal of citizens being “motivated to do the opposite of what the other, disliked, party endorses [...] to differentiate themselves from that disliked party” (Druckman et al. 2021). We explore a different possibility: Opposition to out-party policies could be driven by considerations about policy substance, not merely partisan animus.
Delegating to the Party System? The Information Value of Party Conflict
APSA award winner: Best Paper in Political Psychology 2023
with Rune Slothuus and Love Christensen
When deciding whether to support a policy, citizens often rely on heuristics such as party cues, whether their party supports or opposes a policy proposal. While some argue this simplifies decision-making, critics warn it may mislead citizens when parties deviate from their typical policies. This study examines how the party system mitigates this risk. It proposes that cues from other parties serve as "fire alarms" for partisans, alerting them to deviations from their party’s typical policies. Through 24 preregistered experiments involving partisans from all parties in the Danish parliament across three central issues, the study finds that the structure of party conflict shapes partisans’ understanding and support for a policy from their party. Importantly, when policy proposals from partisans’ own parties are opposed by parties with similar policy reputations to their own party and supported by parties with dissimilar policy reputations, partisans infer that the policy is atypical for their party and decrease their support. This shows how political institutions influence citizens’ decision-making processes.
How Party Reputations Help Citizens Grasp What Is at Stake in Policy Debates
with Rune Slothuus and Love Christensen
Understanding policy issues is fundamental for citizens’ democratic participation, yet most citizens lack detailed knowledge about even the most prominent policy proposals. We argue that citizens use parties’ policy reputations to infer the con- tent and consequences of policies. We test our theory in a particularly demanding context: during the government negotiations following the Danish national election in November 2022. Two preregistered experiments examine how citizens infer the substance of two real and salient policy proposals from the election campaign, varying which single parties or potential government coalitions sponsored the proposals. The results show that citizens make different inferences about the policies based on which party or government coalition is proposing them, reflecting the parties’ policy reputations. A second study, a survey among top political journalists from the main news media outlets, validates the accuracy of citizens’ policy inferences. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature on party cues by showing that citizens are able to draw on multiple party cues in forming nuanced and accurate beliefs about the effects of policies. These results support our argument that parties help citizens grasp the meaning of policy issues.
The Visual Incivility Bias in News
While surveys consistently show that ordinary Americans think incivility is a big problem in politics, researchers have not shown conclusively that politicians are any ruder than they used to be. To address this apparent disconnect between perceptions and actual behavior, I propose that a visual incivility bias in the news makes politicians appear ruder than they actually are. I show the existence and importance of this bias in two steps. First, I use crowdsourced content analysis of almost 9,000 images from televised debates, newspapers, and stock photo archives to show that images of politicians engaged in rude behavior (like shouting, cross-talking, and pointing at each other) are systematically overrepresented in the news. Second, I rely on two survey experiments to show that such images can powerfully shape perceptions of elite incivility. In sum, the results suggest that the visual choices of the media play an important role in creating the so-called “civility crisis” of American politics.
