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Political Behavior
Erschienen in: Political Behavior 2/2021

20.09.2019 | Original Paper

Motivating Participation Through Political Ads: Comparing the Effects of Physiology and Self-reported Emotion

verfasst von: Kristyn L. Karl

Erschienen in: Political Behavior | Ausgabe 2/2021

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Abstract

With numerous scholars expressing interest, and in some cases concern, over the impact of televised campaign ads on participation, it is vital that our understanding of the effects of political advertising be based on sound assumptions. Yet research regarding emotion and politics relies almost exclusively upon self-reported measures. How does reliance on self-reported measures of emotion impact our understanding of the short-term motivational forces that impact political participation? Using a randomized experiment with carefully manipulated campaign advertisements, I find evidence that an alternative measure of emotional response, physiological arousal, is a powerful predictor of citizens’ willingness to participate in politics. Arousal is not simply a proxy for self-reported emotion, but rather, a different and complementary measure of the emotional experience. I also explore the relationship between arousal and self-reported emotion and find evidence that the translation of arousal into self-reported emotion depends in part on characteristics of the message such as partisan tone and on characteristics of the individual such as political knowledge.
Vorheriger Artikel The Activation of Prejudice and Presidential Voting: Panel Evidence from the 2016 U.S. Election
Nächster Artikel Educational Attainment and Social Norms of Voting

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Fußnoten
1
For more background on EDA and psychophysiology, see Dawson et al. (2007) and/or Smith and Hibbing (2011).
 
2
Given evidence that variation in SCL could be due to changes in uncontrolled structural features of the messages, such as music and camera changes (see Potter and Choi 2006), each of the four ads created have the following structural design: sponsorship image (still with PID), 2 timed video clips, 3 still images, 1 video clip, 4 still images, repeat sponsorship image (still with PID). Storyboards for the ads are available in the Online Appendix.
 
3
While small, this sample size is greater than existing studies of physiological response to political advertisements: Daignault et al. (2013) had n = 31; Wang et al. (2012) study had n = 15, whereas Bradley et al. (2007) had n = 51.
 
4
Participants were recruited from two databases: students were drawn from a student subject pool and non-students were drawn from a database affiliated with the local hospital system. The database consisted of more than 17,500 individuals, including healthy volunteers and individuals with existing medical conditions. Participants with existing medical diagnoses known to influence physiology were excluded (e.g. major depressive disorders, substance abuse, etc.). No systematic differences in physiology between the student and non-student samples were found. In exchange for 1 h of participation, the students were given course credit whereas the non-students were given $20 cash.
 
5
Regarding partisanship, the sample included 16 self-identified Republicans, 38 self-identified Democrats (coding includes ‘leaners’ as partisans), and 7 self-identified Independents. In an effort to increase diversity in terms of partisan affiliation, 7 adult participants were recruited after answering a pre-screening question regarding their partisanship. Analyses indicated they did not differ significantly from the rest of the sample on demographic and interest variables.
 
6
Due to the size and layout of the room, viewing took place 28–36 in. away from an 18-in. monitor.
 
7
Asking about partisan identity may have primed participants to react to the treatment in a partisan manner. This was a deliberate decision intended to enable the collection of several attitude measures prior to treatment exposure; doing so increases confidence in measures of the strength of one’s partisan attachments, at the expense of (potentially) increasing motivated processing. I’d argue, for many citizens, the mere mention of politics is likely to prime partisan predispositions, so pretest measures of attachment do more good than harm.
 
8
Measures of physiological arousal were collected using two disposable Biopac electrodes (Model: EL507) placed on the palm of the participant’s nondominant hand (the thenar and hypothenar eminences) (Blascovich et al. 2011). The measurement equipment was a Biopac MP150 bioamplifier and data was recorded continuously using AcqKnowledge (v 3.9) software for Macintosh.
 
9
Within-subjects standardization adjusts for individual differences in responsiveness and relies upon the mean, a more stable and reliable statistic than measurements of maximum response (Ben-Shakhar 1985). Difference scores were calculated for each participant using a measure of the area bounded by the curve during the time periods of interest. The area measure is “better suited for automated data analysis and captures both the amplitude and temporal characteristics of SCL, and therefore is likely to be a more valid indicator than either aspect alone” (Figner and Murphy 2010, p. 8).
 
10
Specific details on the cleaning and processing of the SCL data can be found in the Online Appendix.
 
11
Response options were on a five-point, fully labeled scale: not at all, Slightly, Somewhat, Very, Extremely. Full question wording is provided in the Online Appendix.
 
12
The data and replication code for all of the analyses in this paper are available at: https://​osf.​io/​8bkca/​.
 
13
As mentioned previously in the text, coding the ads in this manner necessitated the exclusion of pure Independents from the analyses (n = 7). Partisan leaners are included as partisan identifiers. The effective sample size is n = 52.
 
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Metadaten
Titel
Motivating Participation Through Political Ads: Comparing the Effects of Physiology and Self-reported Emotion
verfasst von
Kristyn L. Karl
Publikationsdatum
20.09.2019
Verlag
Springer US
Erschienen in
Political Behavior / Ausgabe 2/2021
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Elektronische ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09569-2

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