The impact of perceived partisanship on climate policy support: A conceptual replication and extension of the temporal framing effect
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In: Journal of Environmental Psychology, Vol. 86, 101972, 03.2023.
Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The impact of perceived partisanship on climate policy support
T2 - A conceptual replication and extension of the temporal framing effect
AU - Herberz, Mario
AU - Brosch, Tobias
AU - Hahnel, Ulf J.J.
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The Authors
PY - 2023/3
Y1 - 2023/3
N2 - Bridging the political divide between liberals and conservatives is one of the biggest challenges in reaching broad public support of climate policies. Research has suggested that framing climate policies with respect to the past may reduce opposition by political conservatives, but recent attempts to replicate this effect have failed. A new perspective on these inconsistent findings may be offered by taking the influence of temporal framing on individuals' perception of the messenger into account. The present work investigated how implicit cues contained in temporal message framing as well as explicit political identity cues shape the perceived political orientation of a messenger and subsequent climate policy support by partisans. Across three experiments (Ntotal = 2012), we found that past (vs. future) framing and conservative (vs. liberal) party affiliation independently contributed to the messenger being perceived as more conservative. Past framing and conservative party affiliation increased endorsement of the messenger and the message by conservatives, but decreased endorsement by liberals. However, past framing and conservative party affiliation independently increased conservatives’ climate policy support, with mixed effects on liberals. Moreover, a temporal framing effect only emerged when messenger party affiliation was made explicit, suggesting that activating individuals' political identity facilitates the integration of implicit identity cues contained in temporal framings. We discuss the theoretical implications of our integrated account for the observation of partisan effects and reassess the potential of temporal framings to reduce the political divide on climate change.
AB - Bridging the political divide between liberals and conservatives is one of the biggest challenges in reaching broad public support of climate policies. Research has suggested that framing climate policies with respect to the past may reduce opposition by political conservatives, but recent attempts to replicate this effect have failed. A new perspective on these inconsistent findings may be offered by taking the influence of temporal framing on individuals' perception of the messenger into account. The present work investigated how implicit cues contained in temporal message framing as well as explicit political identity cues shape the perceived political orientation of a messenger and subsequent climate policy support by partisans. Across three experiments (Ntotal = 2012), we found that past (vs. future) framing and conservative (vs. liberal) party affiliation independently contributed to the messenger being perceived as more conservative. Past framing and conservative party affiliation increased endorsement of the messenger and the message by conservatives, but decreased endorsement by liberals. However, past framing and conservative party affiliation independently increased conservatives’ climate policy support, with mixed effects on liberals. Moreover, a temporal framing effect only emerged when messenger party affiliation was made explicit, suggesting that activating individuals' political identity facilitates the integration of implicit identity cues contained in temporal framings. We discuss the theoretical implications of our integrated account for the observation of partisan effects and reassess the potential of temporal framings to reduce the political divide on climate change.
KW - Climate policy support
KW - Partisan effects
KW - Political divide
KW - Temporal message framing
KW - Psychology
KW - Sustainability sciences, Management & Economics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85148712184&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101972
DO - 10.1016/j.jenvp.2023.101972
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85148712184
VL - 86
JO - Journal of Environmental Psychology
JF - Journal of Environmental Psychology
SN - 0272-4944
M1 - 101972
ER -