Liberal whites’ racial resentment is harnessed by racial appeals across ideologically opposed policy domains.

Evidence

In addition, we find (3) that liberals high in racial resentment are particularly responsive to implicit racial appeals and sometimes explicit appeals as well. Although results differ across studies in other ways, in both studies we find that racial appeals harness racial resentment to shift whites’ views, but this effect occurs among liberals specifically. That we find similar effects for both opposition to welfare and support for gun control is notable because of the many ways that these two policy domains—and the racialized rhetoric surrounding them—differ. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 172

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s question about whether professed liberal/egalitarian conviction diverges from measured racial bias when dog-whistle frames are deployed. — connects to: Dog-whistle appeals mobilize racially resentful white liberals, not conservatives — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 11; Implicit racial appeals mobilize resentment among liberals as well as conservatives — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 56; Subtly racialized appeals mobilize high-resentment liberals but leave moderates and conservatives unmoved. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 77 (+4 more)
• QUESTION: Why would high-resentment liberals respond to racial appeals moored to gun control, a domain historically stripped of racialized imagery — does the encoding itself do the work regardless of the policy scaffold?

Related

• Dog-whistle appeals mobilize racially resentful white liberals, not conservatives (similarity 0.93)
• Racial appeals intensify racial-attitude influence on gun attitudes among liberals, not conservatives. (similarity 0.91)
• Implicit racial appeals boosted liberal support for gun control (similarity 0.90)
• Implicit racial appeals mobilize resentment among liberals as well as conservatives (similarity 0.90)
• Racial resentment predicts switching to Trump mainly among white liberals. (similarity 0.89)
• Subtly racialized appeals mobilize high-resentment liberals but leave moderates and conservatives unmoved. (similarity 0.88)
• Racially resentful white liberals number about ten million and may be decisive voters. (similarity 0.87)
• Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer — Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle? Experimental Evidence That Racial Resentment and Political Ideology Condition Responses to Racially Encoded Messages (similarity 0.86)
• Gun control is racialized such that racial resentment decreases support for it. (similarity 0.84)
• White liberals high in racial resentment switched to Trump at probabilities above fifty percent. (similarity 0.84)
• Racially encoded messages backfire among moderates high in racial resentment. (similarity 0.83)
• Dog-whistle effects may cut opposite ways across ideology (similarity 0.83)
• Prior exposure to racialized elite cues hardens opposite positions against novel racial appeals. (similarity 0.82)
• Implicit racial appeals produce an opposite-of-predicted backfire effect among low-resentment moderates. (similarity 0.82)
• Racial appeals do not generally amplify the effect of racial attitudes on welfare support (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Racial resentment predicts switching to Trump mainly among white liberals. #expands (0.85) — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 188