Advertisement

Has Trump Damaged the U.S. Image Abroad? Decomposing the Effects of Policy Messages on Foreign Public Opinion

  • Alexander Agadjanian
  • Yusaku HoriuchiEmail author
Original Paper
First Online:

Abstract

The U.S. President Donald Trump has frequently made foreign countries central to his political messages, often conveying animosity. But do foreign citizens react more to the speaker of these messages—Trump himself—or their content? More generally, when people are exposed to messages sent from foreign countries, are their attitudes influenced by information heuristics or information content in messages? Although related studies are abundant in the literature of American public opinion, these questions are not fully examined in the literature of foreign public opinion. To address them, we used Japan as a case and fielded a survey experiment exposing citizens to U.S. policy messages that varied by source, policy content, and issue salience. Results suggest that while the source cue (Trump attribution) causes negative perceptions of the U.S., the policy content (cooperative vs. uncooperative) has a larger effect in shaping opinion of the U.S. Furthermore, analysis of interaction effects shows that only when U.S. policy approach is uncooperative does the Trump attribution have significantly negative and large effects. We conclude that foreign citizens rely more on policy content in transnational opinion formation—an aspect that past research in this area has overlooked. Substantively, these findings may demonstrate that even under a presidency that has alienated foreign countries and seemingly undermined U.S. stature in the world, foreign opinion toward the U.S. does not hinge entirely on its political leader. In short, Trump has not irreparably damaged the U.S. image abroad.

Keywords

Foreign public opinion Political psychology Political communication Heuristics Cues Japan Trump 
This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access.

Supplementary material

11109_2018_9511_MOESM1_ESM.pdf (796 kb)
Supplementary material 1 (pdf 795 KB)

References

  1. Aldrich, J. H., Sullivan, J. L., & Borgida, E. (1989). Foreign affairs and issue voting: Do presidential candidates ‘Waltz before a blind audience? American Political Science Review, 83(1), 123–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  2. Arceneaux, K. (2008). Can partisan cues diminish democratic accountability? Political Behavior, 30(2), 139–160.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  3. Balmas, M. (2018). Tell me who is your leader, and I will tell you who you are: Foreign leaders’ perceived personality and public attitudes toward their countries and citizenry. American Journal of Political Science, 62(2), 499–514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  4. Berinsky, A. J. (2007). Assuming the costs of war: Events, elites, and American public support for military conflict. The Journal of Politics, 69(4), 975–997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  5. Boudreau, C., & MacKenzie, S. A. (2014). Informing the electorate? How party cues and policy information affect public opinion about initiatives. American Journal of Political Science, 58(1), 48–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  6. Brader, T. (2006). Campaigning for hearts and minds. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
  7. Broockman, D. E., & Butler, D. M. (2017). The causal effects of elite position-taking on voter attitudes: Field experiments with elite communication. American Journal of Political Science, 61(1), 208–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  8. Bullock, J. G. (2011). Elite influence on public opinion in an informed electorate. American Political Science Review, 105(3), 496–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  9. Busby, E. C., Flynn, D. J., & Druckman, J. N. (2017). Studying framing effects on political preferences: Existing research and lingering questions. In P. D’Angelo (Ed.), Doing news framing analysis II. New York: Routledge. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
  10. Chong, D., & Druckman, J. N. (2007). Framing public opinion in competitive democracies. American Political Science Review, 101(4), 637–655.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Ciuk, D. J., & Yost, B. A. (2016). The effects of issue salience, elite influence, and policy content on public opinion. Political Communication, 33, 328–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  12. Cohen, G. L. (2003). Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 808–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. Datta, M. N. (2009). The decline of America’s soft power in the United Nations. International Studies Perspectives, 10(3), 265–284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  14. Datta, M. N. (2014). Anti-Americanism and the rise of world opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  15. Dragojlovic, N. I. (2011). Priming and the Obama effect on public evaluations of the United States. Political Psychology, 32(6), 989–1006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  16. Dragojlovic, N. I. (2013). Leaders without borders: Familiarity as a moderator of transnational source cue effects. Political Communication, 30(2), 297–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  17. Druckman, J. N., Hennessy, C. L., St. Charles, K., & Webber, J. (2010). Competing rhetoric over time: Frames versus cues. The Journal of Politics, 72(1), 136–148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  18. Gilens, M., & Murakawa, N. (2002). Elite cues and political decision-making. In M. D. Delli Carpini, L. Huddy, & R. Y. Shapiro (Eds.), Research in micropolitics (6th ed., pp. 15–50). Bingley: Emerald Group.Google Scholar
  19. Goldsmith, B. E., & Horiuchi, Y. (2009). Spinning the globe? U.S. public diplomacy and foreign public opinion. The Journal of Politics, 71(3), 863–875.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Goldsmith, B. E., & Horiuchi, Y. (2012). In search of soft power does foreign public opinion matter for US foreign policy? World Politics, 64(3), 555–585.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  21. Goldsmith, B. E., & Horiuchi, Y. (2018). “Spinning the globe? The U.S. and global public opinion.” A book manuscript in preparation.Google Scholar
  22. Goldsmith, B. E., Horiuchi, Y., & Inoguchi, T. (2005). American foreign policy and global opinion: Who supported the war in Afghanistan? Journal of Conflict Resolution, 49(3), 408–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  23. Goldsmith, B. E., Horiuchi, Y., & Wood, T. (2014). Doing well by doing good: The impact of foreign aid on foreign public opinion. Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 9(1), 87–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  24. Holsti, O. R. (2008). To see ourselves as others see us: How publics abroad view the United States after 9/11. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. Iyengar, S., & Valentino, N. A. (2000). Who says what? Source credibility as a mediator of campaign advertising. In A. Lupia, M. D. McCubbins, & S. L. Popkin (Eds.), Elements of reason. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
  26. Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39(4), 341–350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  27. Katzenstein, P. J., & Keohane, R. O. (Eds.). (2007). Anti-Americanisms in world politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
  28. Klar, Samara. (2013). The influence of competing identity primes on political preferences. Journal of Politics, 75(4), 1108–1124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  29. Levin, I. P., Schneider, S. L., & Gaeth, G. J. (1998). All frames are not created equal: A typology and critical analysis of framing effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76(2), 149–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  30. Majima, Y. (2017). The feasibility of a Japanese crowdsourcing service for experimental research in psychology. SAGE Open, 7(1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Majima, Y., Nishiyama, K., Nishihara, A., & Hata, R. (2017). Conducting online behavioral research using crowdsourcing services in Japan. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(378), 1–13.Google Scholar
  32. Miller, J. M., & Krosnick, J. A. (2004). Threat as a motivator of political activism: A field experiment. Political Psychology, 25(4), 507–523.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. Miller, J. M., Krosnick, J. A., & Fabrigar, L. R. (2016). The origins of policy issue salience: Personal and national importance impact on behavioral, cognitive, and emotional issue engagement. In J. A. Krosnick, I.-C. A. Chiang, & T. H. Stark (Eds.), Political psychology: New explorations. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
  34. Mullinix, K. J. (2016). Partisanship and preference formation: Competing motivations, elite polarization, and issue importance. Political Behavior, 38(2), 383–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  35. Nicholson, S. P. (2012). Polarizing cues. American Journal of Political Science, 56(1), 52–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  36. Nye, J. S, Jr. (2004). Soft power: The means to success in world politics. New York: Public Affairs.Google Scholar
  37. Rabinowitz, G., Prothro, J. W., & Jacoby, W. (1982). Salience as a factor in the impact of issues on candidate evaluation. The Journal of Politics, 44(1), 41–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  38. Rohlfing, I. (2012). Case studies and causal inference: An integrative framework. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  39. Schatz, E., & Levine, R. (2010). Framing, public diplomacy, and anti-Americanism in Central Asia. International Studies Quarterly, 54(3), 855–869.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  40. Walt, S. M. (2006). Taming American power: The global response to U.S. primacy. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
  41. Wike, R., Poushter, J., & Zainulbhai, H. (2016). As Obama Years Draw to Close, President and U.S. Seen Favorably in Europe and Asia. Technical report Pew Research Center.Google Scholar
  42. Zaller, John. (1992). The nature and origins of mass opinion. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.MIT Election and Data Science LabCambridgeUSA
  2. 2.Dartmouth CollegeHanoverUSA

Personalised recommendations

Cite article

Buy options