Priming theory predicts a scandal makes relevant opinions weigh more heavily in leader evaluations

Evidence

Priming insists first of all that the impact on assessments of President Reagan’s performance due to foreign affairs opinions—indexed in Equation 1 by b1, b2, and b3—be greater in the postrevelation group than in the prerevelation group. Priming also requires that the impact of economic assessments and racial attitudes on evaluations of Reagan— indexed by b4 and b5—should remain the same or decline across the two groups. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 1597

Categorization

• DEFINE: States the core testable predictions of agenda-setting/priming applied to a natural experiment.