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Moral Rhetoric, Extreme Positions, and Perceptions of Candidate Sincerity

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Abstract

Most Americans believe that politicians do not try to keep their campaign promises. This deep level of cynicism threatens to break a fundamental link in representation and undermines the legislative process. If candidates cannot credibly convey their positions, then voters will not trust them to enact policies. Yet, we know little about the strategies politicians might take to convey the sincerity of their claims. We argue that politicians can signal sincerity by justifying their stances in moral terms or by taking more extreme positions. Across three experiments, our results suggest that moral justifications tend to enhance perceived sincerity, while extreme positions do not. In a fourth study, we show that extreme stances increase polarization in candidate evaluations, but moral justifications do not. Taken together, our findings suggest that moral justifications are a useful strategy to reduce cynicism without contributing to rising levels of polarization.

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Notes

  1. Replication data is available at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/AKKDGC.

  2. https://forwardfla.com/our-work/.

  3. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/14/politics/immigration-campaign-ads-midterms/index.html.

  4. This statement is consistent with a growing body of work showing that the relative success of clarity vs. ambiguity is dependent upon a number of conditions (e,g, Milita et al. 2017; Simas 2021a; Simas, Milita, and Ryan 2021b).

  5. Kreps, Laurin, and Merritt (2017) do advance a partisanship hypothesis, but they focus on agreement with the second of two conflicting stances taken by the speaker, not shared party identity.

  6. Again, we find no evidence of an interaction, as the effects are similar for the extreme pragmatic condition (b = − 0.15, p = .005) and the extreme moral condition (b = − 0.22, p = .001).

  7. The weighted AAPOR RR3 cumulative response rate was 6.3%. This study was funded and fielded by Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS). Study 4 was also funded by TESS.

  8. Across the three candidate trials, the Cronbach’s alpha ranges from 0.78 to 0.79.

  9. Specifically, they are identical in sign and significance, and highly similar in effect size. We maintain random effects to be consistent with models that incorporate individual differences (e.g., partisan identity).

  10. We find no evidence of interaction effects between the treatments for either outcome (ps > 0.59).

  11. We also explored whether the results are consistent across issues and find no evidence that the results are driven by a specific issue.

  12. Formerly the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Principle Investigators Brian Schaffner, Stephen Ansolabehere, and Sam Luks. For more information, see https://cces.gov.harvard.edu/.

  13. We measured several character traits, but these traits loaded on multiple factors, so we focus on the “moral” trait as the most relevant. We get substantively identical results when instead analyzing “compassionate.”

  14. For details, see the Appendix.

  15. https://www.langerresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/1207a2GunPolicy.pdf.

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  1. University of Houston, 3551 Cullen Blvd. Rm 447, 77204, Houston, TX, USA

    Scott Clifford & Elizabeth N. Simas

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Clifford, S., Simas, E.N. Moral Rhetoric, Extreme Positions, and Perceptions of Candidate Sincerity. Polit Behav 46, 523–542 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-022-09835-w

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