Prior exposure to racialized elite cues hardens opposite positions against novel racial appeals.

Evidence

Similar to our previous argument as to how the historical racialization of welfare might make racial appeals ineffective, these discussions in conservative media may lead moderates and conservatives to form strong chronic associations between welfare usage and stereotypes of African Americans that dampen the effect of any novel racial appeal. In the case of gun control, conservative news sources’ discussions of the disproportionate incidence of crime among black Americans may have a similar effect of leading to greater opinion rigidity among moderates and conservatives. These discussions in conservative media mean that conservatives and moderates have likely regularly encountered conservative elites’ arguments about how to respond to criminal activity among black Americans-and specifically, have encountered arguments that gun control policies will not solve the problem because these policies take guns out of the hands of “law-abiding,” implicitly white, citizens (Filindra and Kaplan 2016). We might therefore expect racial appeals to be ineffective for moderates and conservatives because their exposure to elite cues about how to think about negative outcomes among black Americans leads them to be able to defend their previously held positions when presented with a novel racial appeal. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 182

Categorization

• QUESTION: This predicts the asymmetry mechanism: repeated exposure to same-direction elite framing makes moderates/conservatives rigid against novel appeals, implying a threshold dynamic rather than a linear effect.
• XREF: connects to: Conservative strategists deliberately coded racial appeals to evade egalitarian norms — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 3; 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; Implicit racial appeals produce an opposite-of-predicted backfire effect among low-resentment moderates. — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 79 (+4 more)

Related

• Subtly racialized appeals mobilize high-resentment liberals but leave moderates and conservatives unmoved. (similarity 0.89)
• Implicit racial appeals mobilize resentment among liberals as well as conservatives (similarity 0.86)
• Implicit racial appeals produce an opposite-of-predicted backfire effect among low-resentment moderates. (similarity 0.86)
• Dog-whistle effects may cut opposite ways across ideology (similarity 0.84)
• Dog-whistle appeals mobilize racially resentful white liberals, not conservatives (similarity 0.84)
• Racially encoded messages backfire among moderates high in racial resentment. (similarity 0.83)
• Racial appeals intensify racial-attitude influence on gun attitudes among liberals, not conservatives. (similarity 0.83)
• Explicit and implicit racial cues boost racial resentment equally in whites (similarity 0.83)
• Implicit racial appeals boosted liberal support for gun control (similarity 0.83)
• Liberal whites’ racial resentment is harnessed by racial appeals across ideologically opposed policy domains. (similarity 0.82)
• Explicit racial appeals fail to shift welfare support whereas implicit racial cues succeed. (similarity 0.82)
• 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 0.81)
• Conservative strategists deliberately coded racial appeals to evade egalitarian norms (similarity 0.80)
• Racial appeals do not generally amplify the effect of racial attitudes on welfare support (similarity 0.79)
• Gun control is racialized such that racial resentment decreases support for it. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Exposure to opposing political views often increases rather than reduces polarization. #expands (0.80) — , The Braided Reading EPUB, 1475
• Exposing the racist subtext of coded appeals can make Whites repudiate them #contradicts (0.78) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2190
• Implicit racial appeals mobilize resentment among liberals as well as conservatives #complicates (0.72) — Rachel Wetts and Robb Willer, Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle?…, 56