Learning More from Political Communication Experiments: Pretreatment and Its Effects

Research on political communication effects has enjoyed great progress over the past 25 years. A key ingredient underlying these advances is the increased usage of experiments that demonstrate how communications influence opinions and behaviors. Virtually all of these studies pay scant attention to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inAmerican journal of political science Vol. 56; no. 4; pp. 875 - 896
Main Authors Druckman, James N., Leeper, Thomas J.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Malden, USA Blackwell Publishing Inc 01.10.2012
Wiley Subscription Services
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Subjects
Attitude strength
Casinos
Civil liberties
Communication
Economic surveys
Experimental methods
Experiments
Framing effects
General Public
Identification
Patriot Act
Political behaviour
Political campaigns
Political Communication
Political influences
Political opinions
Political science
Political science research
Polls
Pretreatment
Terrorism
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Summary:Research on political communication effects has enjoyed great progress over the past 25 years. A key ingredient underlying these advances is the increased usage of experiments that demonstrate how communications influence opinions and behaviors. Virtually all of these studies pay scant attention to events that occur prior to the experiment—that is, in "pretreatment events." In this article, we explore how and when the pretreatment environment affects experimental outcomes. We present two studies—one where we control the pretreatment environment and one where it naturally occurred—to show how pretreatment effects can influence experimental outcomes. We argue that, under certain conditions, attending to pretreatment dynamics leads to novel insights, including a more accurate portrait of the pliability of the mass public and the identification of potentially two groups of citizens—what we call malleability reactive and dogmatic.
Bibliography:ArticleID:AJPS582
istex:7DC5B99F70B5CB333CCD17E3D34446A90F9C0EDE
ark:/67375/WNG-9D9JVJQN-B
http://dvn.iq.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/leeper
We thank seminar participants at Harvard University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Kansas for helpful comments. We also thank Laura Stoker for particularly insightful comments. Data from this study can be found at
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ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2012.00582.x