What is it about?
This paper examines what happens when people are confronted with a negative message about the Supreme Court -- an institution that is generally very well-liked -- from a political figure toward whom they have strong feelings. People who liked the message source (e.g., Donald Trump) reduced their support for the Court after hearing him say nasty things about it; conversely, those who disliked the message source increased their support after hearing the negative comments. This is true over two studies, one using candidate Hillary Clinton and the other using president-elect Donald Trump.
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Why is it important?
The findings show that support for the Supreme Court is malleable, which matters because the Court relies on public support in order for the elected branches of government to execute its decisions. Further, this paper shows that malleability in support is driven by feelings toward the person giving the message, not any information gleaned from the message. This is significant because affective changes are not grounded in knowledge or evaluations of the Court, but in feelings toward a political figure; ideally, evaluations of an institution would derive from that institution's actions.
Perspectives
I believe the findings in this paper can help researchers begin to sort out what happens when there is dueling affect toward two well-liked stimuli. What happens when positive affect confronts positive affect? Here, it seems the explicitly partisan stimulus can "outweigh" the positivity toward the institutional stimulus. Partisan stimuli might be a unique "kryptonite" for institutional legitimacy.
Professor Miles T. Armaly
University of Mississippi
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Extra-judicial Actor Induced Change in Supreme Court Legitimacy, Political Research Quarterly, December 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1065912917750278.
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