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Andrew Gelman wants to see the evidence for the effects of subliminal primes on policy attitudes; fair enough. A bit more Googling would have gotten him to Cengiz Erisens Stony Brookdissertation, Affective Contagion: The Impact of Subtle Affective Cues in Political Thinking. Chapter 3 reports a variety of analyses linking affective primes (happy or sad cartoon faces) to political attitudes and policy evaluations. Heres an example (Figure 3.1) involving attitudes on illegal immigration.

In this case, subliminal exposure to a smiley cartoon face reduced negative thoughts about illegal immigration, increased positive thoughts about illegal immigration, and (crucially for Gelman) substantially shifted policy attitudes. The results for some of Erisens other cases are not as clear, and I havent signed up forsignificantly and consistently alter, as Gelmans headline seems to imply. (It isnt clear from his post where that quote comes from.) But I do think Erisens work provides some powerful evidence of the impact of irrelevant stimuli in political thinking.

One of the commenters on my previous post, Ulium, raises a different question, about the durability of these effects. Long-term evidence is, as s/he notes, in sadly short supply in experimental work. But Im not sure why that should be reassuring for democracy. After all, the experimental evidence for the impact of considerations we would like to matter has the same limitation. Is there any reason to suppose that citizens generally succeed in forgetting the irrelevant stuff and remembering the relevant stuff?

In this case, according to Milton Lodge and Charles Taber, effects on policy attitudes were measured up to 45 minutes after the original subliminal primes. Thats something. Then, too, there is observational evidence along similar lines suggesting real political effects(for example, Andrew Healy, Neil Malhotra, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo on college football games and election outcomes).

Do results of this sort warrant alarm?Gelman refers in his final paragraph to concerns about democracy expressed by Bartels. Im not sure what concerns about democracy he detected. Just for the record, Im okay with democracy. Its unrealistic theories of democracy I object to.

Larry Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. He has written extensively on American electoral politics, public opinion, representation, and public policy.

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