Research

In the United States, spending on political campaigns has surged dramatically. This paper introduces and examines “party-defiance ads,” a novel and increasingly common type of political advertisement in which candidates criticize their own party and take a position typically associated with the opposing party. Given the importance of party loyalty, defiance ads appear counterintuitive and risky. Why would candidates air ads in which they criticize their party? Across eight main studies and eight supplemental studies (N = 11,473), including an analysis of voting outcomes in recent elections, we investigate how consumers react to the use of defiance ads. We find that though defiance ads can be risky and trigger backlash, they have the potential to provide benefits to candidates. We identify when and why consumers support, tolerate, and penalize defiance ads in the context of both general elections and primaries. Our findings examine a previously undocumented advertising strategy, contribute to debates about affective polarization by showing that consumers can occasionally set partisan loyalty aside in favor of strategic considerations like electability, introduce electability as an important construct for research on consumer behavior, and provide practical insights for managers interested in using defiance ads.

In 2022, Democrats spent $53 million on ads helping far-right candidates win Republican primaries. Paying for ads that support far-right candidates, the reasoning went, could help Democrats win in the general elections because it is easier to beat extreme than moderate candidates. In the current research, we ask: how do consumers react to the use of “meddle ads”? On the one hand, because of rising levels of polarization, consumers might be accepting, or even supportive, of meddle ads. On the other hand, because meddle ads might come across as unethical and risky, consumers might be averse to their use. Across 7 main studies and 10 supplemental studies (N = 7,740) using multiple empirical approaches—including conjoint analysis, vignette studies, incentive-compatible donation studies, and analysis of online comments using human coders and NLP tools—we find that consumers are averse to the use of meddle ads. This aversion is driven by three factors: concerns about the character of the candidate, outcome-related risk (losing elections), and system-related risk (losing trust in democracy). These findings contribute to research on political marketing, provide practical guidance for marketers around meddle ads, and identify a novel type of risk perceptions with implications for consumer behavior research.

Elected officials are increasingly extreme. Research trying to understand this trend has tended to focus on structural factors, such as primary elections and changes in the supply of candidates. Less emphasis has been placed on psychological perspectives. The current research advances such a perspective. Leveraging research on attitudes, we investigate when and why people prefer extreme over moderate candidates from their own party. We posit that the identity relevance of people’s attitudes plays a key role. Specifically, we propose that identity relevance fosters attitude extremity, which in turn promotes a preference for extreme over moderate candidates. Across six main studies (N = 3136) using a variety of political issues, operationalizations of identity relevance, instantiations of candidate extremity, and experimental paradigms (including two studies with human-LLM interactions), we find support for this hypothesis. Our findings suggest that as attitudes become more identity relevant, they become more extreme, leading individuals to prefer extreme over moderate candidates from their party.

Political advocacy is increasingly common. Companies routinely voice positions on political issues, consumers mobilize around issues they care about, and campaigns spend billions of dollars each election cycle. In this review, we define the construct of political advocacy, distinguish it from related constructs, and review the fast-growing interdisciplinary literature on the topic. We organize our review around a central question: when is political advocacy effective? We posit that the answer depends on two critical factors: the goal of political advocacy and the actor behind it. Drawing on decades of research across marketing, psychology, political science, management, and economics, we identify four goals that frequently underlie political advocacy: capturing attention, changing attitudes, inspiring action, and cultivating affiliation. For each goal, we review relevant findings and organize them by actor type (political campaign, company, and consumer). We conclude by discussing open questions and promising future directions for research on political advocacy.

People generally believe that more is better in persuasion, for good reason. Past research has shown that providing more arguments can enhance a message’s persuasiveness. In contrast, we demonstrate that increasing the number of arguments in a message can have conflicting effects on perceptions of the message source. Compared to using few arguments, using many arguments makes the source seem more like an expert, increasing persuasion, but it can also make the source appear to have greater persuasive intent, decreasing persuasion. These perceptions suppress each other, resulting in minimal or no overall benefit to persuasion. We document these effects across multiple experiments. We further demonstrate that providing many arguments can have a clear positive or negative effect, depending on whether high expertise or low persuasive intent is more valued. These findings expand our understanding of argument quantity effects in persuasion and contribute to a growing literature on conflicting source perceptions.

A fast-growing body of research finds that receptiveness to opposing political views carries reputational benefits. A different body of research finds that opposing political views and the people who hold them are seen as repugnant. How could it be that people receptive to opposing political ideas are viewed positively when the political opponents they are receptive to are seen negatively? In seven main (N = 5,286) and nine supplemental studies (N = 3,983 participants in online studies; N = 124,493 observations in field data), we reconcile this tension by arguing that the identity of the person one is receptive to determines whether receptiveness carries reputational benefits or costs. When the information source belongs to the opposing party, receptiveness to opposing political views often carries reputational costs. We find these reputational costs across both strong and weak signals of receptiveness, eight different political and social issues, and multiple types of prototypical out-party sources. We argue that these costs arise because members of the opposing party are frequently stereotyped as immoral, and thus receptiveness to their ideas is seen negatively. As a boundary condition, we find that the costs of receptiveness are pronounced for sources who are prototypical of the out-party and attenuate (or even reverse) for sources who are nonprototypical.

In response to increasing societal divisions, an extensive literature has emerged examining the construct of receptiveness. This literature suggests that signaling receptiveness to others confers a variety of interpersonal benefits, such as increased persuasiveness. How do people signal their receptiveness to others? The current research investigates whether one of the most fundamental aspects of language — pronoun use — could shape perceptions of receptiveness. We find that in adversarial contexts, messages containing second-person pronouns (“you” pronouns) are perceived as less receptive than messages containing first-person plural pronouns (“we” pronouns). We demonstrate that “you” pronouns signal aggressiveness, which reduces perceived receptiveness. Moreover, we document that perceived receptiveness influences important downstream consequences such as persuasion, interest in future interaction, sharing intentions, and censorship likelihood. These findings contribute to a fast-growing literature on perceived receptiveness, uncover novel consequences of signaling receptiveness, and contribute to our understanding of how pronouns shape social perception.

On consumer matters, politics, and social issues alike, people regularly advocate on behalf of their attitudes — that is, their opinions or their likes and dislikes. In this chapter, we review recent research on the antecedents of attitudinal advocacy, defined as an expression of support for or opposition to something. We consolidate prior findings into core insights about what drives people to advocate, covering the roles of attitude strength, compensatory motives, perceived efficacy, emotions, attitude framing, and affective versus cognitive bases. We then identify promising directions for future research, including questions about what people say when they advocate, and the advocacy-relevant behaviors of boycotting and censorship that have yet to be formally integrated into the advocacy literature.

Past research has uncovered actions that would seem to undermine but in fact frequently enhance persuasion. For example, expressing doubt about one’s view or presenting arguments against it would seem to weaken one’s case, but can sometimes promote it. We propose a framework for understanding these findings. We posit that these actions constitute acts of receptiveness — behaviors that signal openness to new information and opposing viewpoints. We review four classes of acts of receptiveness: conveying uncertainty, acknowledging mistakes, highlighting drawbacks, and asking questions. We identify conditions under which and mechanisms through which these actions boost persuasion. Acts of receptiveness appear to be more persuasive when they come from expert or high-status sources, rather than non-expert or low-status sources, and to operate through two primary mechanisms: increased involvement and enhanced source perceptions. Following a review of this work, we delineate potentially novel acts of receptiveness and outline directions for future research.