Moral conviction as a moderator of framing effects

Coverage of political issues by the media often contains subtle persuasive content that can go unnoticed. Past research has labeled one such type of persuasion as issue framing; persuasion that works by altering what information within a discussion receives emphasis rather than altering the content of that information. While the relationship between the use of issue frames and resulting opinion is well established, what is less understood is what factors might moderate the relationship. Existing research has suggested that a variety of attitude and message variables might affect this relationship. This study examined whether an especially strong type of belief, moral conviction, acts as a moderator of the relationship between issue frames and opinion. This study also manipulated the extent to which language was used in framed arguments to test whether the effect of moral conviction is dependent on the message. Two political issues, environmental protection and tax policy, were used to test these hypotheses, and to compare the effect of moral conviction to other variables previously studied in the literature. The results of this study did not consistently support the hypotheses presented, but provided at least some evidence that moral conviction moderates the effects of persuasive communications.M.A.Includes bibliographical referencesby Sean Patrick Garguil