Framing Changes Ethical Attitudes

Click here and press the right key for the next slide.

(This may not work on mobile or ipad. You can try using chrome or firefox, but even that may fail. Sorry.)

also ...

Press the left key to go backwards (or swipe right)

Press n to toggle whether notes are shown (or add '?notes' to the url before the #)

Press m or double tap to slide thumbnails (menu)

Press ? at any time to show the keyboard shortcuts

Framing Changes Ethical Attitudes

‘we hypothesized that exposing conservatives to proenvironmental appeals based on moral concerns that uniquely resonate with them will lead them to view the environment in moral terms and be more supportive of proenvironmental efforts.’

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 2

Background

Study 2: ‘environmental rhetoric [...] resides primarily within the harm/care moral domain’

Study 2: ‘Content analyses of environmental rhetoric from both video and print media revealed that such rhetoric resides primarily within the harm/care moral domain’

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 4)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 4

Study 3 : read a persuasive message

‘Participants in the harm/care and purity/sanctity conditions read a persuasive message modeled after a newspaper op-ed. These messages utilized words typical of their respective moral domains (Graham et al., 2009). The harm/care message described the harm and destruction humans are causing to the environment and emphasized how important it is for people to care about and protect the environment. Participants in the purity/sanctity condition read about how polluted and contaminated the environment has become and how important it is for people to clean and purify the environment.’

‘[harm/care] ... the harm and destruction humans are causing to the environment and emphasized how important it is for people to care about and protect the environment.’

‘[purity/sanctity] ... how polluted and contaminated the environment has become and how important it is for people to clean and purify the environment.’

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 figure 2

Fig. 2. Results from Study 3: mean proenvironmental attitude as a function of moral-messaging condition and political ideology (liberal = 1 SD below the mean; conservative = 1 SD above the mean). Asterisks indicate significant differences between groups (p < .001). Error bars represent ±1 SEM.

‘Participants then completed a 3-item measure of proenvironmental attitudes (e.g., “It is important to protect the environment”; α = .79), [this is the one reported in the figure here]

... ‘a 5-item measure of support for proenvironmental legislation (e.g., “In general, I would support government legislation aimed at protecting the environment”; α = .91), and a 3-item measure of belief in global warming (e.g., “I believe that humans are causing global warming”; α = .93)’ (Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 5)

a twist

might be important later

‘We found parallel results regarding belief in global warming. Conservative participants reported greater belief in global warming when exposed to the purity/sanctity message than to the harm/care [...] or neutral message’ (Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 5).

This is puzzling. Why would a message with little or no information about global warming (‘a persuasive message modeled after a newspaper op-ed’) modify beliefs in anthropogenic climate change?

This might not be noise in the results because there is a related finding ...

related finding

‘climate change skepticism was lower in the common ingroup condition than in the binding and liberty condition.’ (Wolsko, 2017, p. 292)

How can changing ethics make people more likely to believe in anthropogenic climate change?

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 2

But can it change how people act?

Kidwell et al, 2013

Effects on behaviour, not just talk

‘we developed tailored persuasive messages that appealed to the individualizing foundations for liberals, based on fairness and avoiding harm to others, and the binding foundation for conservatives, based on duty and an obligation to adhere to authority. We found that these congruent appeals significantly affected consumers’ acquisition, usage, and recycling intentions and behaviors’ (Kidwell, Farmer, & Hardesty, 2013).

[(Wolsko, Ariceaga, & Seiden, 2016) says these results are inconsistent with (Feinberg & Willer, 2013) ! But this is only because Kidwell et al find an effect on liberals too (cf Feinberg 2015 next study)]

These are from Study 4. (Study 2 included extraneous logos &c) ‘However, the “binding” conservative appeal displayed a patriotic image while the “individualizing” liberal appeal displayed a well-known charity (Habitat for Humanity).’

‘You can make a difference by recyling because you know it’s the right thing to do. Your actions can help care for others and allow the greatest good for society. Because of people like you, we can reduce the harm to others and to the environment by recycling. You CAN make a difference’

Extraneous changes too!

Kidwell et al, 2013 figure 4

Kidwell et al, 2013 figure 3

‘STUDY 2: SIMPLE SLOPES OF APPEAL TYPE BY POLITICAL IDEOLOGY ON WEEKLY RECYCLING’

another study

Wolsko et al. (2016, p. figure 5)

Different lab and methods; comparable result.

Wolsko et al. (2016, p. figure 5)

Here’s the typical effect: libs give more than cons

Wolsko et al. (2016, p. figure 5)

Remove the rhetoric about harm, care and fairness and lib con give equally

Wolsko et al. (2016, p. figure 5)

Add in rhetoric about binding foundations and con give more!

Wolsko et al. (2016, p. Experiment 2) found evidence that moral reframing can influence how much people donate to an ‘Environmental Defense Fund’.

(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)

Feinberg & Willer, 2013 p. 2

Are there other cases where moral reframing works? THEN: Are there any conflicting results?

Can liberals’ attitudes on typically conservative issues also be changed using a similar ethical framing strategy?

In previous study, lib and con attitudes both changes; but libs went down on environment. Can libs’ attitudes on a typically conservative issue go *up*?

Day, Fiske, Downing, & Trail (2014): no evidence that liberals become more conservative on typically conservative issues when these are framed in terms of harm or fairness (from STudy 1);

... but they do find shifts in conservative participants’ views on typically liberal issuse when these are framed in terms of purity [not shown]

They also find entrenching effects (libs become more typically liberal when typically liberal issues are framed in terms of harm or fairness (and likewise for conservatives))

‘The following are five [first two only=these two figures] examples of morally framed conser- vative stances: 1. Education/Harm: We must care for our children by having the freedom to put them in schools that match their parents’ wishes. 2. Immigration/Fairness: It is only fair to preserve the rights of long-term citizens ahead of recent immigrants.

‘the spare sentence-long, stimuli used in the studies’

(Feinberg & Willer, 2015 p. 1667)

Feinberg & Willer (2015, p. 1667) comment on Day et al. (2014): ‘It is possible that the inconsistency of the moral framing effects in these studies owed to the spare sentence-long, stimuli used in the studies.’

‘Education/Harm: We must care for our children by having the freedom to put them in schools that match their parents’ wishes.’

‘Immigration/Fairness: It is only fair to preserve the rights of long-term citizens ahead of recent immigrants.’

Day et al, 2014 figure 1A-B

Can liberals’ attitudes on typically conservative issues also be changed using a similar ethical framing strategy?

Feinberg & Willer, 2015 figure 6 (on Study 6)

Observation 1: The novel feature here is that the issue is a one that conservatives are generally more sensitive to, and changing the moral framing is shifting Liberal’s views. (I think this is important because it shows that the strategy for changing attitudes works for liberals as well as conservatives.)

Obs 2: the basic approach also works for issues other than climate change.

[Aside] Now see that they get essentially the same result when they group people not by their political views but directly by their fairness scores.

caption: ‘Figure 6. The interaction between political ideology and message framing (top panel) and between fairness morality and message framing (bottom panel) on support for making English the official language of the United States (Study 6).’

They computed two fairness scores. ‘we calculated each participant’s average score on the fairness scale and subtracted out the average of the four remaining moral domains. Doing so allowed us to capture each participant’s specific endorsement of the fairness foundation, while accounting for the tendency for some participants to report high levels of endorsement across all the foundations, labeling this mea- sure fairness score—continuous. Second, we used participants’ ranking of the fairness foundation, relative to the other foundations, labeling this measure fairness score—rank.’

The lower panel in this figure shows the interaction with fairness score—continuous

Can liberals’ attitudes also be changed using a similar ethical framing strategy?

Day et al, 2014 : no evidence of persuasion for liberals (but for conservatives)

Feinberg & Willer, 2015 : yes

Aside: If moral reframing is effective, why isn’t it used more?

(Feinberg & Willer, 2015)

Instructions (to Liberals in Study 1): ‘Now, we would like you to write a persuasive argument (4-5 sentences) aimed at convincing conservative Americans who oppose same-sex marriage of why they should be in favor of same-sex marriage.

Note: In a follow-up study, we will actually present your argument to conservative Americans who oppose same-sex marriage to see if they are persuaded by your argument. Participants who are able to effectively persuade these future study participants will be entered into a drawing for a $50 bonus.’

Conservatives asked to write argument for Liberals aimed at supporting Official English.

‘Feinberg and Willer (2015) found that when participants were asked to identify whether a morally reframed argument or a more typical moral argument would be more persuasive to those on the other side of the political spectrum, 64% of liberal participants and 85% of conservative participants correctly selected the morally reframed argument.’ (Feinberg & Willer, 2019, p. 7)

Note that some participants attack their targets’ morality.

Keyboard Shortcuts?f

Framing Changes Ethical Attitudes

Keyboard Shortcuts`?f`