Campaign Advertising and the Stimulation and Activation of the Authoritarian Personality

Abstract

This research examines whether authoritarianism can be stimulated and activated by politicians. The traditional belief is that psychological traits are basically quasipermanent structures that consistently determine behavior, but newer research suggests that these traits can be stimulated. This research tests whether campaigns can stimulate traits with targeted messages. I do so by exposing subjects in an experiment to political television advertising that was designed to stimulate known correlates of authoritarianism, such as fear. The results show that authoritarianism is stimulated in treatment groups that watched advertising designed to invoke threat and the strong-father metaphor and the treatment effect is greater on conservatives. I also show that watching these commercials leads to an activation of authoritarianism that influences its predictive power over support for torture. This suggests that politicians can use emotional appeals to stimulate advantageous personality traits, and that these ads also influence the public's attitudes through activation.

Keywords:

• advertising
• authoritarianism
• campaign advertising
• authoritarian personality

Notes

1. See Appendix A for scale items.

2. You can watch these ads on youtube.com. The Ashley's Story ad is available at http://www.youtube:com/watch?v=LWA052-BI48. The Wolves ad is available at http://www:youtube.com/watch?v=MU4t9OyFsY.

3. The company that conducted this survey is Zoomerang, and they have 2 million subscribers. From this pool of 2 million volunteers, they randomly selected 770 adult U.S. citizens to participate in the study. An incentive of 50 Zoomerang points was given to all Internet participants, which equates to about $5 in purchasing power.

4. See Appendix D for the exact question wordings.

5. This simulation was created by Clarify (King, Tomz, & Wittenberg 2000) from the results displayed in Table 2, Model 1.

6. These results are available upon request.

7. See Appendix E for these results.