Political Science 106
Professor Boydstun
March 8th, 2015
Persuasion, Teenagers, Party Identification and Call of Duty The act of persuasion is all around us from the moment we turn on the TV or even driving on the highway and seeing different billboards. The most recent election for congressional seats is a prime example of how different tactics were used to persuade the masses in different parts of the country ultimately increasing republican seats in the house and the senate. So, in lamest terms persuasion as defined by Merriam-Webster, “the act of causing people to do or believe something: the act or activity of persuading people” (Merriam-Webster). The relevance in studying “persuasion” in political psychology is the fact that it occurs all around us, but understanding how it occurs is what allows researchers to gain insight as to why people change beliefs or come to believe something. The article “Misinformation and the Currency of Democratic Citizenship” is one of the scholarly articles that align to the investigation that is being conduct. The question that is proposed in this study is how does misinformation become true beliefs, and how does that effect someone when given factual information in decision making. This study is relevant to persuasion because the subjects are given some information that persuades them to answer question a certain way. This scholarly article hypothesizes the following, “people are misinformed when they confidently hold wrong beliefs” (Kuklinski 790). The attitudes of individuals on the topic of welfare are investigated within three groups in which two groups are given some type of information and the third has no treatment. The first group is given six factual items and the second group is given a multiple-choice test in order to retrieve and explicate what their true beliefs are. Then after that all three groups were asked the same questions in with respects to policy making towards welfare. The research design for the investigation is as follows, 300 respondents are set into three random groups, and are asked questions in a survey. This research concludes that many people are indeed misinformed and are confident in their “factual” facts. An by believing that their facts are true it can skew in a different direction which can reinforce preferences of about policy.’ The second article that aligns to my investigation is “Changing Minds: Political Arguments and Political Persuasion.” There are two dimensions that are referenced in this investigation, in regards to political arguments about policy, which are if someone is for the argument or against and whether it’s easy or hard to understand, creating four different types of arguments: hard-pro, hard-con, easy-pro, or easy-con. The question that is being investigated is which one of the four argument combinations has the strongest influence in citizens’ upon making decisions in policy judgments. The hypothesis of this study is, “Con arguments will be more persuasive than pro arguments” (Cobb 88). The methods used for this investigation were between and within experimental design measuring subjects’ opinions for the issue of NAFTA and health care at three different points in time. The research concluded that, “ Arguments against NAFTA and health care worked especially well. On NAFTA con-arguments were most persuasive when they were also hard and on health care when they were easy. The scholarly articles correlate to the investigation as they serve as foundation for my study. The first article guides the idea that people can be influence, and the second article directly correlates to persuasion, but more to my study as it explore political arguments and their power to persuade. The study being conducted is similar as it tries to uncover how much of an influence do the households have upon teenagers from the ages of 13 to 17. Hypothesis:
Teenagers from the ages 13-17 should identify with their parents party