Is it the Message or the Messenger? Examining Movement in Immigration Beliefs / Hassan Afrouzi, Carolina Arteaga, Emily K. Weisburst.

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Afrouzi, Hassan

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TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w31385.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: How do political leaders affect constituents' beliefs? Is it rhetoric, leader identity, or the interaction of the two that matters? Using a large-scale experiment we decompose the relative importance of partisan messages vs leader sources, in the context of beliefs about immigration. Participants listen to anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant speeches from both Presidents Obama and Trump. These treatments are benchmarked to versions of the speeches recorded by an actor to control for message content, and to non-ideological presidential speeches to control for leader priming. Our findings show that political leader sources influence beliefs beyond the content of their messages in a special case: when leaders deliver unanticipated messages to individuals in their own party. This evidence supports the hypothesis that individuals will "follow their leader" to new policy positions.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w31385 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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June 2023.

How do political leaders affect constituents' beliefs? Is it rhetoric, leader identity, or the interaction of the two that matters? Using a large-scale experiment we decompose the relative importance of partisan messages vs leader sources, in the context of beliefs about immigration. Participants listen to anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant speeches from both Presidents Obama and Trump. These treatments are benchmarked to versions of the speeches recorded by an actor to control for message content, and to non-ideological presidential speeches to control for leader priming. Our findings show that political leader sources influence beliefs beyond the content of their messages in a special case: when leaders deliver unanticipated messages to individuals in their own party. This evidence supports the hypothesis that individuals will "follow their leader" to new policy positions.