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Political Party, Strength of Identification, and Knowledge and Evaluation of Bush v. Gore
Author(s) -
Riggio Heidi R.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00304.x
Subject(s) - persuasion , identification (biology) , psychology , social psychology , relevance (law) , politics , supreme court , attitude change , political science , law , botany , biology
Two studies examined knowledge of and attitudes toward Bush v. Gore , the Supreme Court decision that ended Election 2000, to examine the effects of a strong counterattitudinal message about a high‐relevance issue. Republicans reported the most positive attitudes, while high‐identification Democrats possessed the most accurate knowledge (Study 1); high‐identification participants rated Bush v. Gore as more important and personally relevant than those less identified. Upon persuasion, high‐identification Republicans maintained positive attitudes unrelated to knowledge and issue importance, while Democrats and low‐identification Republicans reported negative attitudes predicted by persuasion (Study 2). High‐identification Republicans reported more positive and fewer negative emotions upon persuasion, with emotions most predictive of attitudes. Implications for the role of emotions in resistance to persuasion are discussed.