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Replication Data for: Social group appeals in party rhetoric: Effects on policy support and polarization

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Social group appeals in party rhetoric: Effects on policy support and polarization
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LMRRZB
 
Creator Huber, Lena Maria
Meyer, Thomas M.
Wagner, Markus
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Can parties and politicians increase support for their policy positions by adding appeals to social groups? Social groups provide simple cues that heuristically help voters to decide whether they support a policy. We argue that the effect of group appeals crucially depends on respondents’ group affect and the valence of the group appeal. Among those with a positive attitude towards a group, adding a positive group appeal to a policy statement should increase support for the policy statement, while adding a negative appeal (i.e., against the group) should decrease support. Among those with negative attitudes towards a group, the opposite effects should occur. We test our expectations with two survey experiments. Our results indicate that the addition of group appeals substantially influences the evaluations of voters and leads to higher polarization. Social group appeals are useful to political parties, but these rhetorical tools may reinforce attitude polarization and group stereotypes.
 
Subject Social Sciences
social groups
group appeals
group affect
political communication
survey experiments
 
Date 2023-11-03
 
Contributor Meyer, Thomas