Publication Type: Paper (prepared oral presentation)
Abstract: Political elite sources are a ubiquitous part of representative democracy. Contrary to common democratic ideals, this suggests that political influence is both a question of the message and of the source. However, following a classical understanding of the notion of elite opinion leadership previous studies have especially focused on the capacity of political elite sources to attract support for a message – i.e. persuasive source effects. In contrast, studies of failed persuasion have been surprisingly lacking.
This paper therefore investigates dissuasive party leader effects – that is the case in which a party leader source decreases support for the message put forward. Drawing on the insights of theories of motivated reasoning, I argue that party leader cues – in addition to the traditional expectation of persuasive effects on political supporters – can be expected to have dissuasive impact on political opponents.
Based on data from two laboratory experiments (N = 447 and 704) conducted in the context of the Danish multi party system, I find that party leader cues have dissuasive effect on recipients who perceive the party leader’s likeability to be low or who do not share the party attachment of the source. Furthermore, I show that the strength of the dissuasive source effect depends on the extent to which the receiver perceives the party leader as non-likeable as well as on the degree of political opposition between the receiver and the source in party political space. The democratic implication of the findings is an accentuation of the limits to elite opinion leadership.