Those seeking to frame political issues to their advantage recognize the power of emotional appeals. Yet the study of framing has focused mainly on the cognitive effects of framing rather than on its emotional effects. This study presents the results of two experiments designed to explore the effect of episodic and thematic framing on emotional response and policy opinion. Participants were randomly assigned to read a column arguing against mandatory minimum sentencing that employed either a thematic or one of two episodic frames featuring a woman who received a harsh sentence under the policy. Episodic framing was more emotionally engaging. Furthermore, the specific emotions elicited by the episodic frame-sympathy and pity for the woman featured in the column-were associated with increased opposition to mandatory minimum sentencing. Yet the thematic frame was actually more persuasive once this indirect effect of frame on emotional response was taken into account. The results are consistent with the conclusion that framing effects on policy opinion operate through both affective and cognitive channels. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.Conventional wisdom tells us that emotional appeals matter. Those seeking to influence opinion and frame political issues to their advantage certainly seem to believe that appeals to emotion aid them in their attempts to gain public support. Moreover, a growing body of research demonstrates that emotion can play a crucial role in how citizens process political information and arrive at political judgments. Yet we know little about the possible effects of framing attempts on emotional response because the framing literature, with a few exceptions, has focused on cognitive reactions. This study extends Iyengar's (1991) work to examine how the use of episodic and thematic framing in a persuasive message affects emotional response and how these emotional reactions might

Framing studies typically are concerned with how people's opinions are affected by opposing ways of presenting, or framing, an issue or event. This paper investigates whether different frames also lead to different patterns of emotional response. Cognitive appraisal models of emotion suggest that frames can alter emotional reactions. An experiment compared students' emotional responses to versions of a newspaper article that emphasized underlying social conditions as the cause of the 1992 Los Angeles riots (situational frame) or emphasized irresponsibility and criminality on the part of the rioters (dispositional frame). Few systematic framing effects were found when examining whether respondents reported experiencing a particular emotion. However, consistent with recent work showing that predispositions mediate the effect of frames on opinion, frames altered the relationship between predispositions and emotion. Patterns suggestive of framing effects also emerged in an examination of the content of people's emotional reactions. The findings are consistent with the claim that framing affects emotional responses, reinforce the claim that framing effects depend on individual predispositions, and underscore the importance of accounting for the content of people's emotional responses in the study of emotion.

This study examines how frames invoking a core value shape the content and quantity of citizens' thoughts about a policy issue. An experimental study showed that exposure to a pro-school voucher equality frame increased the probability that participants would invoke equality in their open-ended survey responses. Exposure to an anti-school voucher equality frame produced the same effect, as did exposure to both frames. At the same time, participants who received either frame or both frames provided fewer open-ended responses. Thus, the frames appeared to focus participants' thoughts on one value while reducing the overall extent to which they thought about the issue. In broader terms, value framing may have implications for the nature and quality of public deliberation about policy issues-a point that scholars should keep in mind when considering how to define and study framing effects.

We investigate Americans' stereotypes of Muslims. We distinguish specific dimensions of stereotypes and find that negative stereotypes relating to violence and trustworthiness are commonplace. Furthermore, these stereotypes have consequences: those with less favorable views of Muslims, especially in terms of violence and trustworthiness, are more likely to support several aspects of the War on Terror. Our findings contrast with some previous research that emphasizes the role of a generalized ethnocentrism, rather than specific stereotypes of Muslims, in explaining public opinion in this domain. We argue that citizens do use specific stereotypes when there is a close correspondence between the dimension of the stereotype and the policy in question.Since September 11, 2001, much of American politics and governance has centered on the "War on Political issues often have a group-centric basis, whereby the group implicated by an issue is central to the politics of that issue and to attitudes about that issue. Scholars have known this for a long time, at least since Converse's (1964) seminal work, and have identified group-centrism in attitudes about many domestic policies, such as welfare, and attitudes about foreign policy during World War II and the Cold War. However, very few studies have examined the War on Terror, even though the "enemy" in this war has been repeatedly identified by its religious identity. Of course it is clear, both in reality and often in the rhetoric of political leaders, that the War on Terror implicates a small subset of Muslims. But despite attempts to differentiate groups like al-Qaeda from Islam writ large, group-centrism may affect public opinion about the War on Terror, with those having derogatory attitudes about Muslims more likely to support this war.Extant research has uncovered unfavorable attitudes toward Muslims, Muslim-Americans, and Islam generally (Davis 2007; Panagopolous 2006; Traugott et al. 2002) and found that those attitudes originate in broader concerns about terrorism (Huddy et al. 2005), evaluations of racial and cultural outgroups (Kalkan, Layman and Uslaner 2009), and authoritarianism (Sniderman, Hagendoorn, and Prior 2004). However, this research does not delve deeply into the specific content of attitudes toward Muslims and Muslim-Americans.The first contribution of this study is to identify in American public opinion the specific stereotypes of both Muslims and Muslim-Americans that are most prevalent. We draw on theories of stereotype content to identify two distinct dimensions of stereotypes-warmth and competence-and show that, while on average Americans evaluate Muslims less favorably overall than they do many other social groups, these evaluations not uniformly unfavorable. Negative warmth stereotypes of Muslims and Muslim-Americans-i.e., as violent and untrustworthy-are particularly common.The second contribution of this study is to delineate how stereotypes of Muslims and MuslimAmericans structure support for the War on Terror. Previous studies...

It has long been known that subjects in certain inference tasks will seek evidence which can confirm their present hypotheses, even in situations where disconfirmatory evidence could be more informative. We sought to alter this tendency in a series of experiments which employed a rule discovery task, the 2-4-6 problem first described by Wason. The first experiment instructionally modified subjects confirmatory tendencies. While a disconfirmatory strategy was easily induced, it did not lead to greater efficiency in discovering the rule. The second experiment introduced subjects to the possibility of disconfirmation only after they had developed a strongly held hypothesis through the use of confirmatory evidence. This manipulation also failed to alter the efficiency of rule discovery. In the third experiment, subjects were taught to use multiple hypotheses at each step, in the manner of Platt's “Strong Inference”. This operation actually worsened performance. Finally, in the fourth experiment, the structure of the problem was altered slightly by asking subjects to seek two interrelated rules. A dramatic increase in performance resulted, perhaps because information which in previous tasks was seen as merely erroneous could now be related to an alternative rule. The four studies have broad implications for the psychological study of inference processes in general, and for the study of scientific inference in particular.

This study argues that citizens base their opinions about world affairs in part on generalized beliefs about how much their nation can trust other nations. Using original data from a two-wave panel survey and a cross-sectional survey, we show that Americans hold stable, internally consistent, and largely pessimistic generalized beliefs about whether the United States can trust other nations. We find that social trust, political trust, partisanship, and age influence this form of trust, which we call international trust. We then demonstrate that international trust shapes whether Americans prefer internationalism to isolationism, perceive specific foreign nations as unfriendly and threatening, and favor military action against Iraq. The role of international trust in shaping opinion may be consistent with theories of low-information rationality, but competing interpretations are also plausible.

This study argues that citizens base their opinions about world affairs in part on generalized beliefs about how much their nation can trust other nations. Using original data from a two-wave panel survey and a cross-sectional survey, we show that Americans hold stable, internally consistent, and largely pessimistic generalized beliefs about whether the United States can trust other nations. We find that social trust, political trust, partisanship, and age influence this form of trust, which we call international trust. We then demonstrate that international trust shapes whether Americans prefer internationalism to isolationism, perceive specific foreign nations as unfriendly and threatening, and favor military action against Iraq. The role of international trust in shaping opinion may be consistent with theories of low-information rationality, but competing interpretations are also plausible.

This study tested 2 important theories in the history of mass communication research, agenda setting and cultivation, by comparing the effects of watching local television news with direct experience measures of crime on issue salience and fear of victimization. Direct experience was measured in 2 ways: (a) personal crime victimization or victimization of a close friend or family member, and (b) neighborhood crime rates. Using a random digit dial telephone survey of residents of theWashington, DC, metropolitan area, researchers found that local news exposure accounted for an agenda-setting effect but did not cultivate fear of being a victim of crime. By contrast, direct experience had no agenda-setting effect but did predict fear.