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This article explores the effects of religious appeals by politicians on attitudes and behavior. Although politicians frequently make religious appeals, the effectiveness of these appeals and the mechanisms of persuasion are unknown. This article explores the possibility that religious language can affect political attitudes through implicit processes. Because religious attachments are formed early in the lives of many Americans, religious language may influence citizens without their awareness. Implicit and explicit attitudes are related but distinct constructs, and implicit attitudes may have behavioral implications in the political realm. I test these hypotheses experimentally, relying on a widely used implicit measure, the Implicit Association Test. I find that a Christian religious appeal affects implicit attitudes and political behavior among people who currently or previously identify as Christian. Furthermore, an explicit preference for less religion in politics does not moderate implicit effects. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractResearchers face difficult decisions about whether to ask potential moderators before or after a survey experiment. Competing concerns exist about priming respondents before the experiment and about introducing post-treatment bias. We replicate the classic "welfare" versus "assistance to the poor" survey experiment, randomly assigning respondents to be asked a battery of racial resentment questions either before or after the question wording experiment. We find little evidence that the question wording effect is different between those who are asked about racial resentment before versus after the experiment. Furthermore, we find little evidence that measured racial resentment is affected by this ordering or by the question wording treatment itself.

Under what conditions does conspiratorial rhetoric about election rigging change attitudes? We investigated this question using a survey experiment the day before and the morning of the 2016 US presidential election. We hypothesized that exposure to conspiratorial rhetoric about election interference would significantly heighten negative emotions (anxiety, anger) and undermine support for democratic institutions. Specifically, we expected that Democrats who read conspiratorial information about interference by the Russians in US elections, and that Republicans who read conspiratorial information about interference by the Democratic Party in US elections would express less support for key democratic norms. Our evidence largely supported our hypotheses. Americans exposed to a story claiming the election would be tampered with expressed less confidence in democratic institutions, and these effects were moderated by prior partisan beliefs about the actors most likely responsible for election meddling.

Television has replaced the newspaper as the major source of news for most people, and thus has the potential to inform the public and influence attitudes. A growing literature has demonstrated the immediate effects of television viewing, but the ability of a particular program to have lasting effects is less clear. In this article, we report on two field experiments that provide a test of the durability of media effects by examining whether two television broadcasts had a lasting influence on viewers' knowledge and attitudes. Both television programs were designed to raise awareness about particular policy issues and to persuade. We find that one of the television programs affected viewer attitudes, even weeks after it aired, while the second television program did not. We consider why particular types of television programs and particular formats are better able to have a lasting impact on the public. Our findings suggest that message repetition is a crucial mechanism for influencing attitudes over the long-term.

A comment on the articles in a special issue on "Neuroscientific Contributions to Political Psychology" emphasizes the need for caution when applying experimental findings to specific political situations. There is agreement with Elizabeth Phelps & Laura Thomas that social neuroscience should complement, not replace, more traditional psychological methods. Consideration is given to extending the ideas of Lieberman et al about how the brain grapples with political information to explore what activates a more social aspect of political choices. Morris et al are complimented for pointing out the associative & affectively charged nature of political representations in long-term memory. Piotr Winkielman's & Kent Berridge's identification of subrational liking of an actor as a possible stimulus for people to behave in ways counter to rational choice is linked to the work of rational choice scholars & attention is called to key issues in the article by Heberlein et al that relate to politics. The relationship between emotion & rationality is said to be one of the most important lessons to emerge from this new field of research. 9 References. J. Lindroth