Working Paper: NBER ID: w31385
Authors: Hassan Afrouzi; Carolina Arteaga; Emily K. Weisburst
Abstract: How do political leaders affect constituents’ beliefs? Is it rhetoric, leader identity, or the interaction of the two that matters? Using a large-scale experiment we decompose the relative importance of partisan messages vs leader sources, in the context of beliefs about immigration. Participants listen to anti-immigrant and pro-immigrant speeches from both Presidents Obama and Trump. These treatments are benchmarked to versions of the speeches recorded by an actor to control for message content, and to non-ideological presidential speeches to control for leader priming. Our findings show that political leader sources influence beliefs beyond the content of their messages in a special case: when leaders deliver unanticipated messages to individuals in their own party. This evidence supports the hypothesis that individuals will “follow their leader” to new policy positions.
Keywords: immigration; political beliefs; leader influence; messaging
JEL Codes: C90; D83
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Political leader sources (D79) | beliefs (D83) |
| Unexpected messages (Z00) | beliefs (D83) |
| Leader identity (M54) | beliefs (D83) |
| Message content (Y20) | beliefs (D83) |
| Leader persuasion (D72) | reduction in partisan polarization (D72) |
| Anti-immigrant speeches by Obama (K37) | beliefs among Democrats (D72) |