Aggregate time-series research hides which citizens shift presidential support and why

Evidence

Priming provides an empirically grounded, psychologically plausible account of how individuals form and revise their views of presidential performance. Priming therefore aspires to complement the dominant tradition in research on support for the president, which applies time series methods to estimate the impact of national and international events on change in the public support. This research has been enormously informative about the aggregate effects of such events while revealing little about the diversity among citizens’ reactions that seem certain to underlie change and stability in the aggregate. From such research we know a great deal about how the public as a whole will respond to a change in unemployment or to a dramatic international crisis but virtually nothing about which citizens are most likely to increase their support for the president, which are likely to decrease their support, and which are likely to be unmoved. The literature is even less prepared to tell us why different citizens respond differently to the same event. Priming provides a general framework to answer such questions. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1625

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Rubin causal inference / heterogeneous treatment effects literature and work on media effects framing doing similar work.