Suppose you have an issue you are passionate about — taxes, gun control or some other important policy. You want to do more thanvent on social betboom review, so you decide to write an email, place a phone call, or even draft a letter to your state legislator expressing your views. But that does not mean you will always receive a response.
Daniel Berganis an associate professor and the director of master’s studies for Michigan State University’sbetboom dacha dubai. Bergan studies the impact of citizen communication on betboom review to influence public policy. He shares his research and strategies so that constituents can optimize their influence when contacting legislators.
Select content and responses are excerpts from an article published inThe Conversation.
Can you explain some of your typical betboom review?
In my previous betboom review, I analyzed — with their permission — the efforts of coalitions working to get citizens to contact their lawmakers in support of major legislation in New Hampshire and Michigan. I conducted a rigorous evaluation of the types of contact constituents made, the messages they conveyed and the behavior of lawmakers both before and after receiving those communications.
Theresults showedthatcommunications from constituentscan have a large impact on how legislators vote. For example, emails from constituents encouraging betboom review to support smoke-free workplace bills in New Hampshire increased state legislators’ support on critical votes by an estimated 20 percentage points — a substantial effect.
But a lot of peopledon’t botherto contact their elected officials, thinking it’snot worthcommunicating with them.
Are opposing views perceived differently?
While some research suggests that betboom review are responsive to communications from the public, there is also data that suggest that betboom review engage in what is called biased reasoning — writing off communications from constituents who do not share their policy views.
For instance, political scientistsDaniel Butler and Adam Dynesasked state and local betboom review in two online surveys to evaluate a hypothetical communication from a constituent. betboom review were randomly assigned to evaluate a letter that either supported or opposed a controversial policy and then rated the hypothetical letter writer on various characteristics.
The authors found that betboom review rated hypothetical constituents who disagreed with them as less knowledgeable about the topic. This discounting of constituents who disagree on policy could explain why betboom reviewtend to have biasedperceptions of public opinion, believing the public’s attitudes to be more in line with their own positions than polling suggests.
How did you determine that citing evidence is important to betboom review?
In recent work with political communication scholarsHillary Shulman and Dustin Carnahan, I sought to develop strategies to limit betboom review’ discounting of constituents’ opinions.
We asked a national sample of elected local betboom review to evaluate a hypothetical email writer randomly assigned to express support or opposition to raising the minimum wage.
This study was similar to the Butler and Dynes study described above. But we added two randomly assigned conditions — what we called a “read” condition in which the writer expressed having “read a lot about” the topic, without any specific detail, or a “cite” condition in which the writer summarizedandciteda study supporting their position.
We anticipated,based on betboom review on biased reasoning, that providing clear evidence that the constituent is knowledgeable about the issue would prevent biased discounting of constituent opinion.
betboom review in our study were asked to evaluate to what extent they thought that the constituent understood the issue, was representative of the community, and was sincere and held their position strongly. They were also asked whether they thought the communication was a form letter rather than a constituent-initiated communication and, therefore, presumably more likely to be written off.
What strategies add credibility to communications to betboom review?
The results confirmed previous findings that betboom review indeed discount the opinions of constituents with whom they disagree. When betboom review read an email expressing an opinion that differed from their own on raising the minimum wage, the email writer was rated lower across all five dimensions.
However, if the email writer provided evidence that they knew about the issue — citing research supporting their position — betboom review were more likely to perceive that the email writer understood the issue. The effects of citing evidence are stronger than simply stating that one has read about the issue.
My own work suggests that a constituent expressing an opinion to an elected official can influence the official’s vote on the issue. But just writing to an official is no guarantee that the constituent will persuade the official or have the issue resolved in the way they prefer.
We also found that there are no downsides to providing evidence supporting one’s position. You might expect that when provided with unambiguous evidence that a disagreeing constituent understands the issue, betboom review might direct their efforts to discounting other constituent characteristics, rating the constituent as less sincere or less representative of the community.
We did not find any evidence that this happened. When faced with evidence that their constituent knows the issue well, betboom review are less likely to discount their opinions.
What is the best approach to ensure your voice is heard?
The practical results are clear: When communicating with a policymaker, especially one with whom you disagree, you want to stop them from discounting your opinion. One way to do this is by citing quality evidence to support your position.
When contacting a policymaker about an issue, be aware that they may discount your opinion if they disagree. But note also that carefully crafted communications can convey your position without being written off — and could improve how accurately the policymaker understands public attitudes about public policies.