Page 113 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

106 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

influences the power of argumentation. He constructed a very intriguing
research procedure in which he created two lines of argument in favor of a
private school for children, framed in either individualistic or egalitarian
terms. These values were not a random choice, because they represented
the two primary political orientations in the United States: the Republican
Party’s support for an individualistic system of values and the Democratic
Party’s support for egalitarian values. The American political arena is thus
divided into conservatives, who worship economic freedom and personal
accountability, and liberals, who strive for humanistic values and equality
of civil rights. Both modes of argumentation were presented to voters re-
garding Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s justification for
his choice of a private school. The voters were asked to assess McCain’s
argumentation and express the extent of their support for him. The results
confirmed the hypothesis; voters were more likely to opt for McCain when
his message was framed in individualistic terms. Barker (2005) also noted
that badly educated voters were generally insensitive to the changes in the
message content reflecting either the individualistic or the egalitarian
frame. The differences in content and the varied influence on voters’ pref-
erences in accordance with their individualistic beliefs were only noticea-
ble among the well-educated voters.
Consequently, internal context must be seen as an important component
that can activate a particular interpretative frame for a message. This con-
text can undoubtedly refer to the segmentation of the political market, both
in psychographic and demographic terms. Moreover, this segmentation al-
lows voters to be classified not only by their political choices, but also by
their sex, area of residence, and level of education. These types of market
segments are strategic for assessing the influence of framing on electoral
behavior, and in the political marketing terminology they are referred to as
primary and secondary segmentation (Cwalina et al., 2009; 2011).
The primary and secondary segments are used to determine the axiolo-
gies of voters in harmony with the values promoted by the political parties
(e.g., individualism versus collectivism), which can enhance the effective-
ness of a particular campaign. Nonetheless, the ultimate condition of this
effective influence is not only that the message is understood by the recipi-
ents, but also that they can relate the message to the values represented
therein and the connection that the message has with the particular politi-
cal option it represents. This connection is far better recognized by well-
educated voters than by less-educated voters, which is why demographic
segmentation is useful (Barker, 2005).
These results help portray a more in-depth picture of the psychological
impact of various frames. One can conclude that the persuasive appeal of