Stanford University Study: research shows how to make effective political arguments

[Ichingcarpenter]

In today's American politics, it might seem impossible to craft effective political messages that reach across the aisle on hot-button issues like same-sex marriage, national health insurance and military spending. But, based on new research by Stanford sociologist Robb Willer, there's a way to craft messages that could lead to politicians finding common ground.

"We found the most effective arguments are ones in which you find a new way to connect a political position to your target audience's moral values," Willer said.

While most people's natural inclination is to make political arguments grounded in their own moral values, Willer said, these arguments are less persuasive than "reframed" moral arguments.

To be persuasive, reframe political arguments to appeal to the moral values of those holding the opposing political positions, said Matthew Feinberg, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto, who co-authored the study with Willer. Their work was published recently online in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Such reframed moral appeals are persuasive because they increase the apparent agreement between a political position and the target audience's moral values, according to the research, Feinberg said.

In fact, Willer pointed out, the research shows a "potential effective path for building popular support in our highly polarized political world." Creating bipartisan success on legislative issues – whether in Congress or in state legislatures – requires such a sophisticated approach to building coalitions among groups not always in agreement with each other, he added.

Different moral values
Feinberg and Willer drew upon past research showing that American liberals and conservatives tend to endorse different moral values to different extents. For example, liberals tend to be more concerned with care and equality where conservatives are more concerned with values like group loyalty, respect for authority and purity.

They then conducted four studies testing the idea that moral arguments reframed to fit a target audience's moral values could be persuasive on even deeply entrenched political issues. In one study, conservative participants recruited via the Internet were presented with passages that supported legalizing same-sex marriage.


http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/october/framing-persuasive-messages-101215.html

[Fumesucker]

1. Conservatives are concerned with respect for authority and group loyalty?

That may be but there are few conservatives in the Republican party these days, they are almost entirely radicals. All you had to do was watch the Republican debates to figure that out.

[libodem]

2. So interesting

Wish I had a personal reason to apply this theory.

Good substance for further graduate studies in political science.

[swilton]

3. I like how George Lakoff describes it