Numeracy and the Persuasive Effect of Policy Information and Party Cues.
Numeric political appeals represent a prevalent but overlooked domain of public opinion research. When can quantitative information change political attitudes, and is this change trumped by partisan effects? We analyze how numeracy-or individual differences in citizens' ability to process and apply numeric policy information-moderates the effectiveness of numeric political appeals on a moderately salient policy issue. Results show that those low in numeracy exhibit a strong party-cue effect, treating numeric information in a superficial and heuristic fashion. Conversely, those high in numeracy are persuaded by numeric information, even when it is sponsored by the opposing party, overcoming the party-cue effect. Our results make clear that overlooking numeric ability when analyzing quantitative political appeals can mask significant persuasion effects, and we build on recent work advancing the understanding of individual differences in public opinion.
V ittorio M érola is a doctoral candidate in the Political Science Department, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. M atthew P. H itt is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. The authors acknowledge support from The Ohio State University's Behavioral Decision Making Initiative, and report no conflict of interest. The authors thank Larry Baum, Gregory Caldeira, Paul Debell, Jessica Defenderfer, Nicholas Felts, Jess Goode, Vladimir Kogan, Yalidy Matos, Kathleen McGraw, William Minozzi, Tom Nelson, Ellen Peters, Katy Powers, Herb Weisberg, the editors, and anonymous referees for comments and suggestions.
Vittorio
V
Mérola
V ittorio M érola is a doctoral candidate in the Political Science Department, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA. M atthew P. H itt is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA. The authors acknowledge support from The Ohio State University's Behavioral Decision Making Initiative, and report no conflict of interest. The authors thank Larry Baum, Gregory Caldeira, Paul Debell, Jessica Defenderfer, Nicholas Felts, Jess Goode, Vladimir Kogan, Yalidy Matos, Kathleen McGraw, William Minozzi, Tom Nelson, Ellen Peters, Katy Powers, Herb Weisberg, the editors, and anonymous referees for comments and suggestions.
Matthew P
MP
Hitt