Page 97 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

90 The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Brannon, 1993; Marquis, 2007; McGraw & Ling, 2003; Miller & Krosnick,
1996).
Second, in some cases, priming effects appear to arise because of two
processes unrelated to priming. Exposing individuals to campaign and
media messages on an issue informs some of them about the parties’
or candidates’ positions on that issue. As a consequence, these newly
informed individuals often adopt their party’s or candidate’s position as
their own. Combined, these effects (learning and adjustments) give rise
to the appearance of priming in the absence of actual priming (Jenkins,
2002; Lenz, 2009). For example, Jenkins found that during the 1993
Canadian election campaign, the fortunes of the Conservative and
Reform parties underwent a fundamental reorientation. While Reform
support grew, it was precipitated by the decline in Conservative support.
Drawing upon the data from the Canadian Election Study, Jenkins
established that Reform’s position on the budget deficit and the welfare
state, which was to the right of the Conservative party, was important for
its mobilization, and that at the end of the campaign cultural questions
were also important. Attitudes toward ethnic minorities, which were
irrelevant early in the campaign in accounting for Reform support among
all respondents, were an important correlate in the last two weeks
before the election. In effect, voters learned about Reform’s true position
on the deficit, and that learning appeared to carry more weight than prim-
ing. But although learning was the key to understanding the increased
importance of welfare state attitudes, priming was responsible for the
increased importance of cultural attitudes. As a result, both of these proc-
esses influenced voters’ preferences and the Reform Party’s success in the
1993 election.

Framing in Political Persuasion

It is no exaggeration to say that the concept of framing is crucial for con-
temporary psychological theories that describe the mechanisms of experi-
encing the physical and societal phenomena in the surrounding world.
The importance of this concept lies in the fact that framing forms a basis
for understanding received information and for defining social issues on
the basis of perception and memory as well as decision-making. This is
explicitly stated by Minsky (1977), when he pinpoints the essence of the
frame theory:

When one encounters a new situation (or makes a substantial change in
one’s view of a problem), one selects from memory a structure called a