Shifting Frames
Conditional Indirect Effects of Contested Issues on Perceived Effectiveness Through Multiple Emotions
Abstract
Abstract. Prior research has found that exposure to news frames can cause emotional responses to political issues. Yet, little is known about how different combinations of news frames and issues relate to discrete emotions and whether these emotions, in turn, affect issue perceptions. The present study investigates these questions by testing whether (a) the effects of news articles, featuring highly versus moderately contested policy issues on perceived policy effectiveness (PPE), are mediated by three discrete emotions (anger, fear, and hope) and (b) if these effects depend on the type of generic news frame used (human interest vs. economic consequences). An online experimental survey (N = 405) demonstrated that the effects of issue contestation on PPE were mediated by hope and anger, but not by fear. These effects were only apparent within a human interest frame. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.
References
(2011). Investigating frame strength: The case of episodic and thematic frames. Political Communication, 28(2), 207–226.
(2010). Emotion guided threat detection: Expecting guns where there are none. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(4), 595–610.
(2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5(4), 323–370.
(1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117(3), 497–529.
(2007). How emotion shapes behavior: Feedback, anticipation, and reflection, rather than direct causation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(2), 167–203.
(2008). Future-oriented emotions: Conceptualization and behavioral effects. European Journal of Social Psychology, 38(4), 685–696.
(2013). Efficiently and effectively evaluating public service announcements: Additional evidence for the utility of perceived effectiveness. Communication Monographs, 80(1), 1–23.
(2013, August 10). The downwinders: Fracking ourselves to death in Pennsylvania. Le Monde diplomatique, Retrieved from http://mondediplomatique.com
(2003). Media, terrorism, and emotionality: Emotional differences in media content and public reactions to the September 11th terrorist attacks. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 47, 309–327.
(2006). Cue convergence associative effects on social intolerance. Communication Research, 33(3), 136–154.
(2007a). Framing theory. Annual Review of Political Science, 10, 103–126.
(2007b). A theory of framing and opinion formation in competitive elite environments. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 99–118.
(2002). News framing as a multiparadigmatic research program: A response to Entman. Journal of Communication, 52(4), 870–888.
(2012).
News framing research: An overview and new developments . In H. A. SemetkoM. ScammelEds., The Sage handbook of political communication (pp. 292–306). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.(2001). Persuasion and the structure of affect: Dual systems and discrete emotions as complementary models. Human Communication Research, 27(1), 38–68.
(2007). The relationship between the perceived and actual effectiveness of persuasive messages: A meta-analysis with implications formative campaign research. Journal of Communication, 57(4), 613–631.
(2010). To frame is to explain: A deductive frame-analysis of Dutch and French climate change coverage during the annual UN Conference of the Parties. Public Understanding of Science, 19(6), 732–742.
(2012). Learning more from political communication experiment: Pretreatment and its effects. American Journal of Political Science, 56(4), 875–896.
(2008). Emotion and the framing of risky choice. Political Behavior, 30(3), 297–321.
(2013). Appraisal theory: Old and new questions. Emotion Review, 5(2), 125–131.
(2012). Issue emergence, evolution of controversy, and implications for competitive framing the case of the HPV vaccine. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 17(2), 169–189.
(1989). Relations among emotion, appraisal, and emotional action readiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57(2), 212–228.
(1987).
The changing culture of affirmative action . In R. G. BraungartM. M. BraungartEds., Research in political sociology (Vol. 951, pp. 137–177). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.(2008). Framing persuasive appeals: Episodic and thematic framing, emotional response, and policy opinion. Political Psychology, 29(2), 169–192.
(2004). Framing emotional response. Political Psychology, 25(1), 1–29.
(2013). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach. New York, NY: Guildford Press.
(2008). Stepping beyond message specificity in the study of emotion as mediator and inter-emotion associations across attitude objects: Fahrenheit 9/11, anger, and debate superiority. Media Psychology, 11(1), 98–118.
(2012). Cognitive, attitudinal and emotional effects of news frame and group cues, on processing news about immigration. Journal of Media Psychology, 23(4), 174–185.
(1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
(1973). On the psychology of prediction. Psychological Review, 80(4), 237–251.
(2014). Political news, emotions, and opinion formation. Toward a model of emotional framing effects. NCCR Working Paper Series Nr. 68. Retrieved from: http://130.60.130.4/publications/workingpaper/pdf/wp_68.pdf
(1991). Progress on a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion. American Psychologist, 46(8), 819–834.
(1999). Hope: An emotion and a vital coping resource against despair. Social Research, 66(2), 653–678.
(2009). Issue importance as a moderator of framing effects. Communication Research, 36(3), 400–425.
(2013). Dealing with feelings: Positive and negative discrete emotions as mediators of news framing effects. Communications, 38(2), 189–209.
(2008). Framing policy debates issue dualism, journalistic frames, and opinions on controversial policy issues. Communication Research, 35(5), 695–718.
(2003). Effects of fear and anger on perceived risks of terrorism: A national field experiment. Psychological Science, 14(2), 144–150.
(2001). Fear, anger, and risk. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1), 146–159.
(2013). Energizing and demotivating effects of norm-conflict. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 39(1), 57–72.
(2012). A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change. Climatic Change, 113(3–4), 1105–1112.
(2002a). Anger, fear, uncertainty, and attitudes: A test of the cognitive-functional model. Communication Monographs, 69(3), 204–216.
(2002b). The theoretical versus the lay meaning of disgust: Implications for emotion research. Cognition & Emotion, 16(5), 695–703.
(2010). The case for emphasizing discrete emotions in communication research. Communication Monographs, 77(2), 153–159.
(1997). Toward a psychology of framing effects. Political Behavior, 19(3), 221–246.
(2013).
Social networks and political context . In J. N. DruckmannD. P. GreenJ. H. KuklinskiA. LupiaEds., Cambridge handbook of experimental political science (pp. 273–286). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.(2013). Attitude change in competitive framing environments? Open-/closed-mindedness, framing effects, and climate change. Journal of Communication, 63, 766–785.
(2013, May 5). Proefboringen naar schaliegas,
[Test drilling for shale gas] Retrieved from http://www.peil.nl/?3755(1997). Switching trains of thought. The impact of news frames on readers’ cognitive responses. Communication Research, 24(5), 481–506.
(2013). Appraisal in the emotion system: Coherence in strategies for coping. Emotion Review, 5(2), 141–149.
(2000). Framing European politics: A content analysis of press and television news. Journal of Communication, 50(2), 93–109.
(2004). The politics of European referendum outcomes and turnout: Two models. West European Politics, 27(4), 557–583.
(2007). Conceptualizing media stimuli in experimental research: Psychological versus attribute-based definition. Human Communication Research, 33(4), 397–426.
(2001). Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: The effects of specific emotions on information processing. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(6), 973–988.
(2009). An S-shaped relationship between changes in appraisals and changes in Emotions. emotion, 9(6), 821–837.
(1973). Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive Psychology, 5(2), 207–232.
(2014). On the conceptual ambiguity surrounding perceived message effectiveness. Health Communication, 30(2), 125–134.
(1999). Exemplification theory: Judging the whole by some of its parts. Media Psychology, 1(1), 69–94.
