Who Persuades and Who Responds?

Abstract

AbstractChapter 7 probes deeper into the notion of pressure framing, drawing on two experiments conducted in Germany and Norway. These experiments introduce three types of realism compared to Chapter 6. First, they increase message complexity. Real-world pressure frames are typically long and involve nuances, vagueness, and semantic complexity. Second, real-world pressure frames quite often provide policy cues about how pressure is to be alleviated. Therefore, most treatments in this chapter combine pressure messages with various types of proposed policy solutions (such as retrenchment or social investment). Finally, a third realistic feature is that the treatments clarify which party (or parties) says that the welfare state is pressured. This allows us to examine which political parties are the most effective proponents of pressure messages (among party sympathizers and as well as other voter groups). Relatedly, Chapter 7 develops and tests the idea that pressure messages with clear party—and policy cues may well trigger ‘resistance’ and ‘counter-arguing’ among groups predisposed against sender and/or content. Resistance implies that effects are weaker or non-existent among those groups. Counter-arguing goes one step further and implies ‘polarization effects’—rather than net negative persuasive effects—such that different groups may react in different directions to the same pressure message.