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Analogic Perspective-Taking and Attitudes Toward Political Organizations: An Experiment with a Teachers’ Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2021

Alexander Hertel-Fernandez  and
Ethan Porter Open the ORCID record for Ethan Porter [Opens in a new window]
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Affiliation:
School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
Ethan Porter*
Affiliation:
School of Media & Public Affairs; Department of Political Science; Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: evporter@gwu.edu
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Abstract

Attitudes toward social out-groups can be improved through “analogic perspective-taking,” whereby respondents are encouraged to use an analogy to take the perspective of the group. It is unclear, however, whether analogic perspective-taking can improve attitudes toward political organizations; how perspective-taking fares compared to the provision of narrative alone; and the limits of the attitude changes it creates. We report results from an experiment that tested analogic perspective-taking exercises about members of teachers’ unions. While perspective-taking improves attitudes toward unions, union members, and willingness to pay more in education taxes, it also increases support for some antiunion policies. A second study suggests that the bidirectional policy effects are attributable to subjects’ difficulty distinguishing pro- from antiunion policies. Analogic perspective-taking can improve attitudes toward social and political groups. But narrative exchange is not always superior to narrative provision, and both approaches may yield mixed effects on policy attitudes.

Keywords

analogic perspective-takingSurvey experimenteducationteachers unions
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , Spring 2023 , pp. 100 - 111
Open Practices
Open data Open materials
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

This article has earned badges for transparent research practices: Open Data and Open Materials. For details see the Data Availability Statement.

†

The authors thank Avi Feller for discussion, and Brianne Sears, Mike Wiser and the Iowa State Education Association for fielding the experiment. All mistakes are our own.

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