A lot of political discussion in the
US examines policies as well as the values related to those policies. Discussions about increasing the minimum
wage, for example, explore both the logistics of wage increases as well as the
values that are signaled by these policies (such as reducing poverty or
promoting the health of businesses).
Suppose you were trying to
influence people’s opinion about particular policies. Would it be better to talk about the specific
policy, or is it more effective to focus on the values related to that policy?
This question was addressed by
Kevin Blankenship, Duane Wegener, and Renee Murray in a paper in the October,
2012 issue of the Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology. They argued
that people have a lot of experience defending their views on particular
behaviors or policies. So, if you try to
argue someone out of their belief on a policy, they will resist the argument
and generate counterarguments. Those
counterarguments protect their belief about the policy.
People have less experience
arguing about values, though. When
someone argues against a value, it does not trigger as many
counterarguments. The arguments that
they hear about their values undermine their belief on those values, which can
then influence their opinion about policies related to the value.
To test this possibility, the
researchers focused on undermining students’ belief in fair pay laws. Most college students are in favor of laws
that mandate fair pay, and so it provides an opportunity to influence the
students’ beliefs. Participants were
asked about their attitudes toward fair pay laws prior to the study.
Some students read an essay that
they were told was written by a professor who aimed to attack fair pay laws,
arguing that they reduce productivity and can bankrupt companies. Other students read the identical essay, but
were told that it was written by a professor who aimed to attack the idea of
equality in society. So, the arguments
that people read were identical, only the target (a particular policy versus a
value) was different. After reading
these essays, participants once again rated their support of fair pay laws.
Participant who read an essay
attacking fair pay laws were relatively unaffected by what they read. Their attitude toward these laws was roughly
the same before and after reading the essay.
Those who read an essay attacking the idea of equality, however, were
more strongly influenced. Their attitude
toward fair pay laws went down substantially after reading the essay.
Other studies in this series
expanded on the results in two ways.
First, studies demonstrated that attacking a value undermined people’s
confidence in that value, which ultimately led them to feel worse about
policies related to that value. Second,
two studies found that attacking a value influenced beliefs about policies
related to that value, but not policies related to other values. So, attacking the value of equality made
people feel worse about policies like affirmative action and civil rights, but
not policies like letting the CIA read emails of private citizens (which is
related to the value of freedom) or nuclear power as a source of energy (which
is related to the value of the environment).
This effect of arguing about
values rather than policies reflects that people find it easier to construct
arguments around policies than to construct arguments around values. If policy makers start to focus their
arguments on values, though, people will become more adept at making arguments
about values. So, while the strategy of
arguing against values may be effective now, it is not clear whether it will
continue to work in the long run.
