Effects of Racial and Racist Appeals on Black Voters

We seek to understand how racist appeals by White candidates affect Black respondents’ perception of a Black and White candidate in a biracial election contest, as well as how appeals to Black authenticity affect Black respondents’ perceptions of two Black candidates vying for office against one another. We offer the results of two experiments conducted with national random samples of African Americans wherein participants were exposed to implicit racial or racist campaign advertisements by a candidate in a fictitious congressional election. Findings reveal that previous work on racist and racial messages are inadequate for explaining the effect of racialized communication in these contexts. Paper prepared for presentation at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 25, 2009. The authors contributed equally to this paper; their names appear in alphabetical order. This data for this study were collected by way of a grant from the Time-Sharing Experiments for Social Sciences (TESS), NSF Grant 0094964, Diana C. Mutz and Arthur Lupia, Principal Investigators. Caliendo & McIlwain MPSA 2009 2 Effects of Racial and Racist Appeals on Black Voters Previous research on race and political campaign communication has primarily centered on the perceptions of White voters toward minorities (including minority candidates) (Sigelman et al., 1995; Terkildsen, 1993; Williams, 1990) and the types and effectiveness of racial messages used to prime White racial attitudes (Johnston, 1999; Mendelberg, 2001; Valentino, Hutchings & White, 2002; Valentino, Traugott & Hutchings, 2002). While the extant literature falls short of confirming a direct causal link between racial animosity and vote choice, there is consensus that racial cues are effective in priming Whites’ prejudicial attitudes, which can subsequently affect the way Whites think about issues and candidates. However, there are some limitations with the currently available research. First, African Americans have rarely been included as participants in research regarding the effects of racial appeals (White, 2007), and thus we know little about how racial appeals by White candidates may affect African American voters. Second, most research has focused on how racial appeals affect public opinion toward policy issues, but it has not addressed the effects of those appeals on voters’ evaluations of minority candidates specifically. Third, scholars have not yet studied the ways in which minority candidates employ racial appeals (especially against other minority candidates) and how such appeals (insofar as they differ from “racist” appeals) may affect both Black and White candidates. Priming and Racial Messages Contemporary research on priming racial stereotypes transcends the context of campaigns (see, for example, Abraham & Appiah, 2006; Chiao et al., 2006; Dixon, 2006; Graham & Lowery, 2004; Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005). Other research, which does focus on campaigns, considers mass media reports as potential priming stimuli (Caliendo & McIlwain, 2006; Terkildsen & Damore, 1999). Recent studies that have tested the priming effects of racial messages and their effect on candidate evaluation and vote choice ultimately support Mendelberg’s (2001) theory that implicit racial appeals are effective persuasive tools (Valentino, Hutchings, & White, 2002; Valentino, Traugott, & Hutchings, 2002). Mendelberg argues that while explicit appeals to race violate the “norm of racial equality,” and thus tend to have a backlash effect on those who use them, implicit appeals can effectively prime White voters’ negative racial predispositions in ways that do not raise those beliefs to consciousness. Implicit appeals are constructed through visual imagery and/or race-coded language; used alongside nonracial text, they produce differing effects so that once racial prejudices are primed, they can affect decision making. These conclusions are consistent with a number of related studies (Entman & Rojecki, 2000; Reeves, 1997). In the two most thorough tests of Mendelberg’s theory, Valentino and his colleagues set out to isolate and measure actual priming effects resulting from voters’ exposure to subtle racial messages. In doing so, they were able to test what types of cues (priming stimuli) are most powerful in activating racial beliefs and to identify the psychological mechanisms that underlie racial priming. In one study (Valentino, Hutchings, & White, 2002) the researchers experimentally manipulated the types of racial cues viewed by respondents in a laboratory setting, using political ads as the vehicle for the racial cues. This choice of stimulus (political advertisements) differs from those used in Mendelberg’s studies (news stories), but the results suggest, along with previous research (Brians & Wattenberg, 1996; Jacobs & Shapiro, 1994), that ads may be a more appropriate cue since they express unmediated intentional messages of candidates, alleviating much of the third-party framing effects that news broadcasts or 1 See Weaver (2007) for a discussion of the psychological processes involved in the common communication constructs of agenda setting, framing and priming. 2 For more specific psychological tests of implicit and explicit attitudes, see McConnell & Liebold (2001) and Rydell et al. (2006). Caliendo & McIlwain MPSA 2009 3 stories present. Valentino, Hutchings and White (2002) found that messages regarding government spending and taxation prime racial attitudes even without racial imagery. However, they found that when imagery was used, there was a more powerful priming effect. Further, they found that racial priming is mediated by the accessibility of race in memory, rather than self-reported levels of the importance of group representation. In a related study, Valentino, Traugott and Hutchings (2002) found that ads containing racial cues significantly strengthened the impact of (self identified) ideology in evaluating candidates, especially in cases where ads portrayed some advantage of Whites over Blacks. Black Candidates, Voters and Race-Based Appeals The number of Black candidates running competitively against White candidates has been steadily increasing. Even in electoral scenarios where the majority of voters is White, African Americans voters often make up sizeable portions of the electorate. In these cases, implicit racist appeals may be used by a White candidate (or his or her surrogates) running against a Black candidate to attract the support of White voters. Such messages may be found in ads, however, that are likely to be seen by (and potentially have an effect on) African American voters, as well. Additionally, racial appeals are increasingly being used by Black candidates running against other Black candidates. In these cases the appeal most often takes the form of a claim to Black authenticity (McIlwain & Caliendo, in press). Because Black voters are the primary targets of appeals to Black authenticity, it is necessary to understand how they might be affected by this form of racial appeal. In this study, we seek to understand how racist appeals by White candidates affect Black respondents’ perception of a Black and White candidate in a biracial election contest, as well as how appeals to Black authenticity affect Black respondents’ perceptions of two Black candidates vying for office against one another. We offer the results of two experiments conducted with national random samples of African Americans wherein participants were exposed to implicitly racial or racist campaign advertisements by a candidate in a fictitious congressional election. Study Design, Hypotheses & Data This study is broken into two separate 1 X 2 (post-test only) experiments composed solely of African American participants. The difference between the two iterations of the study is the racial makeup of the candidates in the contest – one is a biracial contest, while the other is a contest between two Black candidates – and the type of message respondents are exposed to (an anti-Black appeal in the first, and an authenticity appeal in the second). Each study includes a control group in which the participants were exposed to no race-based appeal. We compare the “no racial condition” against the “implicit racial condition” for each contest (biracial and all-Black) separately. The primary dependent variables include candidate evaluation and vote choice (see Appendix A for question wording and order). A number of covariates are included to assess predictive models generated. For our biracial election contest conditions, we test two primary hypotheses: H1: Black respondents exposed to ads containing an implicit racist appeal from a White candidate running against a Black opponent will evaluate the White candidate less favorably than the 3 While the extant literature uses the term “racial appeal” to refer to appeals by Whites that draw on anti-Black sentiment and are primarily targeted to White voters, racial appeals can and are used by members of all racial groups (McIlwain & Caliendo, in press). Thus, we make a distinction; we use the term “racist” appeal to refer the type of appeal that privileges Whites, while we use the term “racial” appeals to denote appeals by candidates that are racial in nature, but may not target anti-Black sentiment for their efficacy. Racial appeals can, for instance, be made by Black candidates and can target primarily Black voters. Caliendo & McIlwain MPSA 2009 4 Black candidate and will be less likely to vote for the White candidate, as compared to Blacks who are not exposed to ads with a racist appeal. H2: Black respondents exposed to ads containing an implicit racist appeal from a White candidate running against a Black opponent will be more likely to anticipate voting on election day than those exposed to no racist appeal. Though recent research (White, 2007) calls into question the degree to which African Americans recognize rac