Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Researchers have started to analyze how politician behavior and rhetoric can prime certain image dimensions, leading citizens to evaluate politicians along these dimensions. This incipient body of work provides intriguing evidence that politicians can and do change image perceptions through speeches and policy activity, especially in the foreign policy domain. In this paper, I contribute to this literature by assessing the image persuasive and image priming effects of presidential responsiveness and unresponsiveness. I argue that changes in public perceptions of the extent to which a politician possesses a certain trait (image persuasion) do not necessarily change the weight given to that trait in overall approval evaluations (image priming). I report the results of an original experiment manipulating whether a president is responsive or unresponsive to public opinion, either on a foreign policy issue or on a domestic issue. This allows me to compare the differential effects of (un)responsiveness in the different issue domains. My findings confirm that image persuasion does not necessarily lead to image persuasion. I discuss the implications for research on politician strategy, presidential politics, priming, and persuasion.