University:
Boston University
Course:
CAS EC 203 | Empirical Economics 1
Academic year:

2023
Views:

229

Pages:

1
Author:

Deja Hood

An Exploration of the Activation of Sympathy in Relation to Economic Inequality and the Poor Abstract As economic inequality in the United States continues to increase, the ways in which Americans cope with and conceptualize the issue itself as well as the disadvantaged groups affected by it have become increasingly salient features of their political attitudes. While important research has been done, particularly by Bartels (2009), showing that Americans share widespread consensus that economic inequality is a negative feature of American society and that Americans do not harbor any innate antipathy towards the poor, more work needs to be done to understand what activates Americans’ sympathy for the poor. This study, building on Burden and Klofstad’s (2005) assessment into the effects of cognitive and affective priming, seeks to understand how issue and subgroup framing alters political expression. I find that the use of the word “feel” in survey questions—as opposed to the word “think”—makes respondents more likely to hold poor subgroups less accountable for their economic circumstances. However, this differential outcome does not manifest when applied to policy-based questions. This indicates that invoking person- or group-based arguments along with affective signifiers shows the best promise for activating sympathy for the poor among Americans. Hypotheses H1: Respondents will, on average, show greater sympathy for the economically disadvantaged when the questions are framed affectively rather than cognitively. H2: Respondents will, on average, hold poor black Americans more accountable for their economic fate when the question is asked before a corresponding question about poor white Americans. H3: Respondents will correctly answer factual questions at higher rates when the questions are framed cognitively rather than affectively. Method Results Sample Findings 1. Limited support for H1. Respondents did exhibit greater sympathy for the poor in response to subgroup-based questions but not policy-based questions. 2. Rejection of H2: This analysis did not find that question-order priming impacted responses to questions about poor racial subgroups. 3. Rejection of H3: Cognitive or affective framing did not impact responses to factual questions at a statistically significant level. Conclusions • Policymakers and elites may find it challenging to achieve success at mobilizing public sympathy for policy proposals that do not invoke pertinent groups of people, even if those policies are intended to help those people. This isn’t to say that mass support for issues is generated out of subgroup appeal, but that reliance on sympathy as an energizing influence is intractable in purely policy-oriented discussions. • Respondents here were more susceptible to affective framing when asked questions that pertained to particular groups of people, in this case economically disadvantaged racial subgroups. However, policy-based questions did not result in statistically significant, or even directionally expected, divergences in attitudinal expression based on cognitive versus affective priming.