In this paper, we provide what we believe is the first conclusive evidence of a pretreatment dynamic. More importantly, we identify conditions under which pretreatment effects occur. We test our expectations with two studies, one in a laboratory environment that controls the pretreatment environment and the other in the context of an Election Day exit poll that observes pretreatment experiences. Our findings reveal what can be learned by attending to pretreatment dynamics. Specifically, our results suggest the possibility of two types of citizens – what we call malleably reactive and dogmatic. Moreover, it may be that the aggregation of experimental political communications studies over-state effects on attitudes that tend to be malleable and fleeting (also see Barabas and Jerit 2010). Psychology of Pretreatment Effects We follow much prior work on mass communication effects by focusing on framing effects. A framing effect occurs when a communication changes peoples’ attitudes toward an object by changing the relative weights they give to competing considerations about the object (Druckman 2001: 226-231). The aforementioned hate group rally experiment is a classic example of a framing effect experiment (Nelson et al. 1997). The pretreatment environment refers to the context prior to exposing experimental participants to the frame. A pretreatment effect occurs when a prior event (e.g., a mass communication) shapes attitudes about the rally that persist at the time of the experiment and condition responses to the experimental stimuli. Individuals who were recently exposed to discussions of the issue might react differently to the treatment than those encountering the issue for the first time (or for the first time in a long time). Our previous example posited that experimental participants had been (repeatedly) exposed to media coverage using the free speech frame which moved opinions. The one additional exposure in the experiment might not further contribute to this movement, leading to the conclusion, based on the experiment, that the free speech frame has no (or a small) effect, when in fact, it had a large
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No Processing Manipulation No Pretreatment (condition 1) N = 46 (2) N = 39 (3) N = 32 On-Line Processing Manipulation Pro Pretreatment (Economic/ Terrorism) (4) N = 61 (5) N = 36 (6) N = 36 Con Pretreatment (Social Costs/ Civil Liberties) (7) N = 42 (8) N = 39 (9) N = 43 Memory Processing Manipulation Pro Pretreatment (Economic/ Terrorism) (10) N = 44 (11) N = 44 (12) N = 62 Con Pretreatment (Social Civil Liberties) (13) N = 41 (14) N = 47 (15) N = 37