Cargando…

Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States

Political advertisements can shift attitudes and behaviors to become more exclusionary toward social out-groups. However, people who engage in an antidiscrimination exercise in the context of an experiment may respond differently to such ads. What interventions might foster inclusive attitudes in th...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Flores, Andrew R., Haider-Markel, Donald P., Lewis, Daniel C., Miller, Patrick R., Taylor, Jami K.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8417058/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34489831
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729322
_version_ 1783748308497334272
author Flores, Andrew R.
Haider-Markel, Donald P.
Lewis, Daniel C.
Miller, Patrick R.
Taylor, Jami K.
author_facet Flores, Andrew R.
Haider-Markel, Donald P.
Lewis, Daniel C.
Miller, Patrick R.
Taylor, Jami K.
author_sort Flores, Andrew R.
collection PubMed
description Political advertisements can shift attitudes and behaviors to become more exclusionary toward social out-groups. However, people who engage in an antidiscrimination exercise in the context of an experiment may respond differently to such ads. What interventions might foster inclusive attitudes in the presence of political communications about social policy issues like transgender rights? We examined two scalable antidiscrimination exercises commonly used in applied settings: describing a personal narrative of discrimination and perspective-taking. We then showed people political ads that are favorable or opposed to transgender rights to determine whether those interventions moderate how receptive people are to the messages. Relying on two demographically representative survey experiments of adults in the United States (study 1 N = 1,291; study 2 N = 1,587), we found that personal recollections of discriminatory experiences did not reduce exclusionary attitudes, but perspective-taking had some effects, particularly among those who fully complied with the exercise. However, both studies revealed potential backfire effects; recalling a discriminatory experience induced negative attitudes among a subset of the participants, and participants who refused to perspective-take when prompted also held more negative attitudes. Importantly, political ads favorable toward transgender rights consistently resulted in more positive attitudes toward transgender people. Future work needs to carefully examine heterogeneous responses and resistance to antidiscrimination interventions and examine what particular aspects of the political ads induced the attitude change.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8417058
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-84170582021-09-05 Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States Flores, Andrew R. Haider-Markel, Donald P. Lewis, Daniel C. Miller, Patrick R. Taylor, Jami K. Front Psychol Psychology Political advertisements can shift attitudes and behaviors to become more exclusionary toward social out-groups. However, people who engage in an antidiscrimination exercise in the context of an experiment may respond differently to such ads. What interventions might foster inclusive attitudes in the presence of political communications about social policy issues like transgender rights? We examined two scalable antidiscrimination exercises commonly used in applied settings: describing a personal narrative of discrimination and perspective-taking. We then showed people political ads that are favorable or opposed to transgender rights to determine whether those interventions moderate how receptive people are to the messages. Relying on two demographically representative survey experiments of adults in the United States (study 1 N = 1,291; study 2 N = 1,587), we found that personal recollections of discriminatory experiences did not reduce exclusionary attitudes, but perspective-taking had some effects, particularly among those who fully complied with the exercise. However, both studies revealed potential backfire effects; recalling a discriminatory experience induced negative attitudes among a subset of the participants, and participants who refused to perspective-take when prompted also held more negative attitudes. Importantly, political ads favorable toward transgender rights consistently resulted in more positive attitudes toward transgender people. Future work needs to carefully examine heterogeneous responses and resistance to antidiscrimination interventions and examine what particular aspects of the political ads induced the attitude change. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-08-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8417058/ /pubmed/34489831 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729322 Text en Copyright © 2021 Flores, Haider-Markel, Lewis, Miller and Taylor. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Flores, Andrew R.
Haider-Markel, Donald P.
Lewis, Daniel C.
Miller, Patrick R.
Taylor, Jami K.
Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States
title Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States
title_full Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States
title_fullStr Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States
title_full_unstemmed Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States
title_short Antidiscrimination Interventions, Political Ads on Transgender Rights, and Public Opinion: Results From Two Survey Experiments on Adults in the United States
title_sort antidiscrimination interventions, political ads on transgender rights, and public opinion: results from two survey experiments on adults in the united states
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8417058/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34489831
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.729322
work_keys_str_mv AT floresandrewr antidiscriminationinterventionspoliticaladsontransgenderrightsandpublicopinionresultsfromtwosurveyexperimentsonadultsintheunitedstates
AT haidermarkeldonaldp antidiscriminationinterventionspoliticaladsontransgenderrightsandpublicopinionresultsfromtwosurveyexperimentsonadultsintheunitedstates
AT lewisdanielc antidiscriminationinterventionspoliticaladsontransgenderrightsandpublicopinionresultsfromtwosurveyexperimentsonadultsintheunitedstates
AT millerpatrickr antidiscriminationinterventionspoliticaladsontransgenderrightsandpublicopinionresultsfromtwosurveyexperimentsonadultsintheunitedstates
AT taylorjamik antidiscriminationinterventionspoliticaladsontransgenderrightsandpublicopinionresultsfromtwosurveyexperimentsonadultsintheunitedstates