IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v96y2015i5p1411-1423.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

God and Marriage: The Impact of Religious Identity Priming on Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage

Author

Listed:
  • Brian F. Harrison
  • Melissa R. Michelson

Abstract

type="main"> We hypothesize that priming a shared in-group identity can lead to openness to attitudinal change, even on highly polarized issues. Specifically, we test whether priming a shared identity as a religious person can generate willingness to voice support for same-sex marriage. We conduct a randomized survey experiment using the SocialSci platform, exposing religious and secular respondents to religious and anonymous primes about same-sex marriage. Individuals who are religious and who are exposed to the treatment prime are more likely to say that they support marriage equality and would vote for a ballot initiative in their state that would allow same-sex marriage. Despite widespread opposition to marriage equality among people of faith, having that religious identity primed through an elite religious cue has a significant and often dramatic effect on attitudes toward marriage equality.

Suggested Citation

  • Brian F. Harrison & Melissa R. Michelson, 2015. "God and Marriage: The Impact of Religious Identity Priming on Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1411-1423, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:5:p:1411-1423
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12169
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Valentino, Nicholas A. & Hutchings, Vincent L. & White, Ismail K., 2002. "Cues that Matter: How Political Ads Prime Racial Attitudes During Campaigns," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 96(1), pages 75-90, March.
    2. Laura R. Olson & Wendy Cadge & James T. Harrison, 2006. "Religion and Public Opinion about Same‐Sex Marriage," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 87(2), pages 340-360, June.
    3. Lax, Jeffrey R. & Phillips, Justin H., 2009. "Gay Rights in the States: Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 103(3), pages 367-386, August.
    4. Gabriel S. Lenz, 2009. "Learning and Opinion Change, Not Priming: Reconsidering the Priming Hypothesis," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 821-837, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Giovanni Facchini & Anna Maria Mayda & Riccardo Puglisi, 2017. "Illegal immigration and media exposure: evidence on individual attitudes," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 7(1), pages 1-36, December.
    2. Jackman, Mahalia, 2019. "Religion, contact and ambivalent attitudes towards the rights of gays and lesbians in Barbados," SocArXiv 528bt, Center for Open Science.
    3. Robert Postic & Elizabeth Prough, 2014. "That’s Gay! Gay as a Slur Among College Students," SAGE Open, , vol. 4(4), pages 21582440145, November.
    4. Lergetporer, Philipp & Schwerdt, Guido & Werner, Katharina & West, Martin R. & Woessmann, Ludger, 2018. "How information affects support for education spending: Evidence from survey experiments in Germany and the United States," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 138-157.
    5. Andrew L. Whitehead, 2014. "Politics, Religion, Attribution Theory, and Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Unions," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(3), pages 701-718, September.
    6. Natalia Letki, 2008. "Does Diversity Erode Social Cohesion? Social Capital and Race in British Neighbourhoods," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 56(1), pages 99-126, March.
    7. Lergetporer, Philipp & Piopiunik, Marc & Simon, Lisa, 2021. "Does the education level of refugees affect natives’ attitudes?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    8. Bekkouche, Yasmine & Cagé, Julia & Dewitte, Edgard, 2022. "The heterogeneous price of a vote: Evidence from multiparty systems, 1993–2017," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    9. Liwei Shan & Shihe Fu & Lu Zheng, 2017. "Corporate sexual equality and firm performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(9), pages 1812-1826, September.
    10. Christafore, David & Leguizamon, J. Sebastian & Leguizamon, Susane, 2013. "Are black neighborhoods less welcoming to homosexuals than white neighborhoods?," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(4), pages 579-589.
    11. Briguglio, Marie & Delaney, Liam & Wood, Alex, 2018. "Partisanship, priming and participation in public-good schemes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 136-150.
    12. Jochen Mayerl & Thorsten Faas, 2018. "Campaign dynamics of cognitive accessibility of political judgments: measuring the impact of campaigns and campaign events using response latencies in two German rolling cross section studies," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1575-1592, July.
    13. Chen, Daniel L., 2016. "Priming Ideology: Why Presidential Elections Affect U.S. Judges," TSE Working Papers 16-681, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Aug 2016.
    14. Rogers, Todd T & Middleton, Joel A., 2012. "Are Ballot Initiative Outcomes Influenced by the Campaigns of Independent Groups? A Precinct-Randomized Field Experiment," Scholarly Articles 9830357, Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
    15. Kennet Lynggaard, 2021. "The Roles of Images in EU Politics," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(5), pages 1213-1229, September.
    16. Robert Brulle & Jason Carmichael & J. Jenkins, 2012. "Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the U.S., 2002–2010," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 114(2), pages 169-188, September.
    17. Mertzanis, Charilaos, 2018. "Institutions, development and energy constraints," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 962-982.
    18. Anglin, Aaron H. & Wolfe, Marcus T. & Short, Jeremy C. & McKenny, Aaron F. & Pidduck, Robert J., 2018. "Narcissistic rhetoric and crowdfunding performance: A social role theory perspective," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 33(6), pages 780-812.
    19. Philipp Lergetporer & Guido Schwerdt & Katharina Werner & Ludger Woessmann, 2016. "Information and Preferences for Public Spending: Evidence from Representative Survey Experiments," CESifo Working Paper Series 5938, CESifo.
    20. Christopher Wratil, 2015. "Democratic Responsiveness in the European Union: the Case of the Council," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 94, European Institute, LSE.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:96:y:2015:i:5:p:1411-1423. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.