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Somebody versus nobody: An exploration of the role of celebrity status in an election
The Social Science Journal 48 (2011) 672–680
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Somebody versus nobody: An exploration of the role of celebrity status in an election Lara Zwarun a,∗ , Angela Torrey b a b
Department of Communication, University of Missouri - St. Louis, 1 University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121, USA Marketing Communication Manager, RPG Direct, Dallas, TX, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 June 2010 Received in revised form 23 May 2011 Accepted 26 June 2011 Available online 22 October 2011
a b s t r a c t This study examines the role celebrity status may play in potential voters’ evaluation of a political candidate presented in a newspaper article. Participants indicated greater intention to vote for a candidate who was a recognizable Hollywood actor than an unknown candidate in a political race, regardless of how substantive the political information provided about the candidate was. This suggests that familiarity with a celebrity can act as a heuristic in peripheral processing. Younger people were more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than older voters, but how liberal or conservative participants are was not a significant factor in the decision to vote for the celebrity. Nor did participants’ need for cognition or level of political involvement predict intention to vote for the celebrity, suggesting that celebrity status is meaningful to motivated and thoughtful voters as well as those who are less motivated and informed. The possibility is raised that this could be an indication of celebrity status being used as a component of deliberate political decision-making, and future research in this direction is suggested. © 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Little empirical research has been conducted on the role celebrity status plays in an election in which one of the candidates is an established Hollywood actor, despite a number of such candidates in the modern political landscape. Common sense suggests that being recognizable as a celebrity could be an advantage in a political race, but this is not established, nor is it known how such an advantage might work. This study is a preliminary attempt to consider these questions, albeit with an experiment involving only one celebrity, the actor Dennis Quaid. The study seeks to establish if in fact people are more likely to vote for a famous Hollywood actor running for office than an unknown candidate, and whether this differs by age, given
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 314 516 6725; fax: +1 314 516 5816. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Zwarun), [email protected] (A. Torrey).
that young adults are often avid consumers of pop culture but may be less involved with politics (Snell, 2010). By manipulating the level of substance in the political information provided about the candidates, the study explores whether any advantage afforded by being a familiar face seems to result from peripheral processing. Participants’ level of political involvement and need for cognition are also controlled for, in an effort to learn more about whether celebrity status might be used by some people as an element of more engaged decision-making. 2. Celebrities in politics Celebrity involvement in politics is not new, but is a growing trend in recent years (McKernan, 2011; West & Orman, 2003). Several types of political celebrities have been identified, including political newsworthies (politicians skilled at public relations and self-promotion); legacies (children or spouses of former politicians); event celebrities (victims who gain notoriety overnight due to a
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tragedy, event, or life situation); and famed non-politicians (known in fields outside of politics who run for office, such as actors, singers, business people, athletes, and astronauts) (West & Orman, 2003). While not all celebrity politicians are from the entertainment industry, numerous Hollywood celebrities have run for political office in recent years (Elliot, 1998; McKernan, 2011). For example, action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger won the gubernatorial race in California in 2003, and Fred Thomson, an actor known for his role on the television show Law and Order, campaigned for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential election. While not always successful at the polls, celebrities draw considerably more media attention than mainstream politicians (West & Orman, 2003). Heavy media presence and cultural fascination with the lives of celebrities (West & Orman, 2003) may cause people to believe they know a celebrity, fostering a sense of intimacy that could confer an advantage to someone in a political race. In the case of Hollywood actors, the type or quality of the fame achieved before entering politics can undoubtedly color the impressions voters have of a celebrity politician. For example, after starring almost exclusively as an action hero in his movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger was hailed by some as “The Governator” of California, suggesting his suitability to solving political problems with tough action. However, even in the case of someone with a more mild and neutral celebrity persona, just having a recognizable name and face might still be enough to give him an advantage over an unknown candidate. It is this kind of fame—familiarity with an actor’s name and face—that this study sought to examine. 3. Celebrity status as a peripheral cue People have limited capacity for information and simply cannot engage in highly involved decision-making in every choice they face (e.g., Lang, 2000). According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981), if their ability and motivation to process information are high, people may carefully evaluate the quality of a message (central processing), but much of the time, people act as “cognitive misers” by engaging in peripheral processing, meaning they tend to rely on superficial cues in the persuasion content that can affect their attitudes without requiring processing of message arguments (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981). It is possible that celebrity status functions as a peripheral cue in political decision-making in much the same way that brand names serve as shortcuts or cues to purchasing decisions (Strack, Werth, & Deutsch, 2006). In this case, when voters are faced with a Hollywood actor as a candidate in a race, fame would emerge as a salient detail, enabling those low in ability and/or motivation to quickly judge the candidates, rather than making an effort to centrally process political information by researching issues and candidates. If celebrity status does in fact function as an easy shorthand or cue, this suggests that the quality of the information provided about the candidate will be less important than it would be in central processing (McGuire, 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1983). This study therefore manipulated
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not only whether the candidate was a Hollywood actor or an unknown, but also the level of detail in the political views provided about the candidate. If participants show greater willingness to vote for a famous candidate, even if the description of his political platform lacks substance, this suggests peripheral processing. Due to of the importance of motivation and ability in determining whether central or peripheral processing occurs (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), this study also considered the situational and dispositional factors of political involvement and need for cognition. People who find politics fascinating are motivated to engage in central processing with respect to politics and well-equipped to do so. There are also people whose nature makes them deliberators; these people are said to be high in need for cognition, or individual preference to actively think and evaluate information when it is not necessary (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). On the other hand, those low in need for cognition are characterized as “more likely to rely on others (e.g., celebrities and experts), heuristics, or social comparison processing” (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996, p. 198). If fame acts as a peripheral cue, we would expect people who are high in political involvement as well as people who have a high need for cognition to be less susceptible to the influence of celebrity and be no more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than a non-celebrity. 4. The role of voter age If celebrity status acts as a peripheral cue in voting decisions involving celebrity politicians, there are several reasons to believe this might be more likely occur with young adult voters (i.e., those in their late teens or 20 s) than older voters. For many years, young adults have been considered low in ability and motivation when it comes to politics, with evidence of apathy, lack of public affairs knowledge, and lack of civic engagement among the 18–24 year old demographic of the American electorate (Buckingham, 1997; Delli Carpini, 2000; Longo & Meyer, 2006; Snell, 2010). Politically uninterested and uninvolved young adults may not have the ability or motivation to seek out and filter the vast number of political media messages associated with political campaigns (Abram, 2008), which could make them susceptible to fame as a heuristic. Further, people in their 20 s are often interested in celebrities, and are the primary audience for entertainment and celebrity news (Pew Research Center, 2002). Without thoughtful engagement or substantive learning, this audience may instead rely on the fame of celebrity candidates (Marks, 2002) to form impressions and make voting decisions about candidates. On the other hand, being a cognitive miser is not unique to young adults. For many Americans, politics is a convoluted topic that involves difficult to comprehend issues such as economics and foreign policy. The dizzying array of political messages and media choices encountered in the days and months leading up to an election can no doubt be daunting to people of all ages, who may find them too much to process thoroughly. The use of celebrity as a heuristic in superficial voting decisions may not be the purview of just young adults.
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Nor is it necessarily true that most young people are politically apathetic: in fact, there is evidence that political apathy is decreasing among the young. The 2008 presidential election generated higher levels of involvement in politics among young adults than previous races had (Austin, Van de Vord, Pinkleton, & Epstein, 2008), largely due to the popularity of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. However, the excitement among young voters over the campaign and Obama’s subsequent victory do not appear to be solely the result of celebrity status being used as a peripheral cue. Despite the fact that Republican candidate John McCain’s advisors attempted to discredit Obama during the election with a television ad that accused him of being a celebrity—with the implication being that being a celebrity is the opposite of a legitimate political candidate (Alexander, 2010)—Obama’s popularity stemmed from a substantive political platform; his celebrity status came after his presidential run began (Alexander, 2010). Thus, the 2008 presidential election serves as evidence that young people do not always approach politics in a superficial manner. And as politicians from President Obama on down turn to social media such as Twitter and Facebook to run campaigns that actively target young voters (e.g., Newt Gingrich’s announcement that he was entering the 2012 political race), political involvement among the young may continue to increase, making them no more susceptible to using celebrity status as a peripheral cue than older voters. It is therefore necessary to explore if voter age plays a role in processing celebrity status. 5. Celebrity status as component in deliberative decision-making It is possible that celebrity status does confer an advantage such that a recognizable actor will be more likely to receive votes, but that this is not a function of celebrity operating as a peripheral cue. Increasingly, there is a theoretical rationale for the possibility that celebrity status may be part of more deliberative decision-making. In the months leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, a Newsweek headline reported on “candidates trying to win over the new ‘It’ demographic: low-info voters” (Smalley and Kliff, 2008, p.34). The word ‘It’ refers to a desirable demographic that it is popular or trendy to pursue. “Low-info” refers to voters who approach decisions about political candidates with limited information. While it is often assumed that people with less information on which to base a voting decision are at a disadvantage relative to people with more information (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996), Popkin (1994) has advanced the idea that voters are completely capable of using substitutes or shortcuts for the vast amounts of information that circulate in an election to engage in reasonable decision-making about a candidate. This process, which he calls “low information rationality,” is thought to result in decisions that are just as informed and high quality as ones that would be made had the large amount of information actually been processed (Lupia and McCubbins, 1998). In other words, this is not the same thing as using celebrity status as a shortcut to avoid deliberative thought; rather, the candidate’s status as a celebrity acts as shorthand for whatever is already known
of him/her, encapsulating that store of knowledge so that it can be readily factored into evaluation of the candidate. Past research has considered political party affiliation and expert advice as examples of low-information rationality shortcuts (Lupia and McCubbins, 1998). Celebrity status could function in the same way, even in the case of celebrities for whom people might not have an extensive store of relevant information (who have not been vocal about politicized issues, for example, nor embroiled in personal scandals that speak poorly of their characters). There is some research to support the idea that celebrity status in a political candidate can play more of a role in political decision-making than just as a shortcut past deliberation. For example, research on celebrity endorsements in advertising has shown they are most effective when there is a clear relationship between the endorser and the product s/he is endorsing (Friedman & Friedman, 1979), and that celebrity endorsers are particularly good matches for products with high social and psychological risk (Atkin & Block, 1983; McCracken, 1989). This suggests that consumers are thoughtful to some degree in their processing of celebrities in advertisements, as opposed to having an automatic positive reaction as might be expected with peripheral processing. In this sense, celebrity status is not a peripheral cue, it is a piece of information that is cognitively processed and used to make informed decisions. Bucy and Grabe (2007) argue that today’s citizens are capable of making reliable judgments about politics through information gleaned from images and impressions in the media. Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president increased people’s intention to vote for him, but not because of a knee-jerk reaction to Oprah’s fame (Pease & Brewer, 2008). Rather, voters drew on information about Oprah’s celebrity they had gathered from non-political parts of their lives (e.g., knowledge of the influence of her book club) to determine that her endorsement increased the viability of Obama being elected, and this assessment led them to be more likely to vote for him themselves. Austin et al. (2008) found that celebrity ‘get out the vote’ promotions were associated with less complacency and increased information-seeking regarding an election; this active pursuit of more information may be driven by celebrity running for office as well (McKernan, 2011). In these examples, celebrity status seems to be part of effortful, albeit condensed, processing on the part of rational actors, not a crutch for cognitive miserliness. Purposive processing of celebrity status in voting decisions may begin to occur with more frequency with politicians’ increasing use of new technologies that connect people and enable them to share quotes, video clips, and news, often in real time (e.g., Scherer, 2011). This potential for interactivity offers people an opportunity to become involved in politics in a meaningful and deliberative way, in a forum where celebrity status is relevant and important, increasing the likelihood of central processing of celebrity status. If celebrity functions as a peripheral cue, it would make sense that this would be most likely to occur for people low in ability and motivation to process more complex political information. In this study, need for cognition, or one’s propensity to think and deliberate, is used to represent
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ability. Motivation, in the context of this study, is represented by pre-existing political involvement, suggesting an interest in and commitment to politics. If people who are low in need for cognition and/or low in political involvement are more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate, this indicates that peripheral processing may be at play. On the other hand, if need for cognition and political involvement do not predict intention to vote for a celebrity candidate, but people are more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than a non-celebrity nonetheless, it is possible that this is a sign that celebrity is being used as a part of central or deliberative processing. This study therefore poses the following hypothesis and research questions: Hypothesis 1. Potential voters will report being more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than an unknown candidate, regardless of how substantive the political information provided about the candidates is. RQ1: Are younger people more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than older people? RQ2: Are less politically involved people more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than those who are more politically involved? RQ3: Are people with lower need for cognition more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than those with higher need for cognition? 6. Methods Participants in this study were 424 undergraduate communication students at a large public university in the Southwest. The majority (76.9%) of the sample was between the ages of 21 and 29, with 14.6% of participants either 19 or 20 and 8.5% ages 30–54. The mean age was 24 (S.D. = 4.40). The sample skewed female (60.8%), and 78.1% reported being registered voters. In terms of political views, the sample was about evenly split among those considering themselves neutral (36.3%), very or somewhat liberal (35.9%), and very or somewhat conservative (27.9%). Complying with the university’s Institutional Review Board, informed consent was obtained for all participants. 6.1. Procedure and stimulus Participants were recruited to partake in a 2 (celebrity vs. unknown candidate) × 2 (substantive vs. nonsubstantive message) factorial design experiment to evaluate the role of celebrity status and message quality on voting decisions. Each participant was randomly assigned to receive one of four versions of a fictional newspaper article about a person running for mayor, accompanied by a photograph of the candidate (please see Appendix A). A fictional political race was used to avoid any influence from preexisting attitudes about a real election. Two of the four articles featured the name and photograph of a celebrity (actor Dennis Quaid) as the person running for mayor; the other two featured a photograph of an unknown candidate with a fictitious name (Tim Eller). Conducting this study with only one celebrity, while a
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logistical necessity, is a limitation with respect to generalizability. However, Dennis Quaid was carefully chosen as the celebrity stimulus for this early-stage attempt to identify the effect of celebrity status for several reasons. Quaid is in his 50 s and his movies are not generally targeted specifically to the young adults making up the bulk of the study’s participants, so while he was familiar to most, he was not likely to be somebody that they had many strong opinions about that would influence their assessment of him as a political candidate. He had not been involved in any major scandals or political movements at the time of the study, although recognizing that many Hollywood celebrities are often assumed to be liberal, participants’ political leanings were controlled for in the study’s analyses. It was possible to find a stock photograph of an unknown man who closely resembled Quaid, so that both candidates are Caucasian males of comparable age, with similar hairstyles, smiling in an above the waist shot, and wearing a suit and tie. T-tests confirmed that the two were perceived to be comparably attractive (on a 5-point scale, MQuaid = 3.60, MEller = 3.67; t Y = −.84, p Y = .40). Thus, while the use of one celebrity limits the ability to generalize to celebrities or Hollywood actors in general, the study was designed so that findings could be attributed to Quaid’s familiarity as an actor, not other variables. One set of news articles described the candidate’s political platform with specific details. Controversial issues such as abortion and religion were excluded in favor of issues such as economic growth, education reform and job creation. The other set of articles provided no details about the candidate’s platform, they just announced his candidacy. Thus, the four conditions were celebrity/substantive article, celebrity/non-substantive article, unknown candidate/substantive article, and unknown candidate/nonsubstantive article. To determine whether the stimuli did in fact vary in terms of celebrity status and the degree of substance of the article in its discussion of the candidate’s political platform, a manipulation check was performed. Each person was asked to indicate on a fivepoint semantic differential scale how known/unknown the mayoral candidate was, and how substantive/nonsubstantive and informative/uninformative the article was. Responses to the latter two items were summed to create one measure of substance ranging from 2 to 10. T-tests indicated that participants perceived the celebrity candidate as significantly more well-known than the fictional candidate (Mknown = 4.29, Munknown = 2.72, t = 5.77, p < .000), and the more detailed news article as significantly more substantive than the less detailed one (Msubstantive = 7.36, Mnon-substantive = 3.29, t = 11.95, p < .000). The experiment was pilot tested on a separate convenience sample of 34 university students. For the experiment, participants received one version of the stimulus article and a pen and paper questionnaire. They were able to refer to the article and photograph while answering the questionnaire. 6.2. Measures The dependent variable was intention to vote for a candidate, measured by asking participants after they read the
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news article, “If the election were right now, how likely are you to vote for this candidate?” Participants were asked to indicate a response choice of “very likely”; “somewhat likely”; “somewhat unlikely”; or “unlikely.” An opt-out or ‘don’t know’ response was not included. The questionnaire also asked participants to indicate their gender, age, whether they were registered voters, and on a 5-point scale ranging from very liberal to very conservative, their political views, which was used to control for participants’ political ideology in the analyses. To examine the role of level of political involvement, Greer’s (1996) scale was used. The scale contains eleven items, six related to political action, and five about communication about politics. Participants indicated on a scale from “never” (1) to “always” (5) how often they engage in activities such as talking with friends and family about politics, voting, working for a political campaign, and reading or watching political stories in the news media. After taking the mean of the responses to the 11 items (˛ = .83), respondents’ political involvement scores ranged from 1.00 to 4.55 (M = 2.42, S.D. = .60), with a higher number indicating higher political involvement. To determine each participant’s personal disposition to enjoy or dislike cognitive thought, respondents were asked to rate the extent to which 15 statements pertaining to how curious and thoughtful they are characterize them. On a five-point Likert scale, in which 1 meant that the subject “strongly disagreed” with the statement and 5 meant the subject “strongly agreed,” respondents noted how much they like tasks that require little thought, prefer complex problems to simple problems, try to anticipate and avoid situations where there is a likely chance that they will have to think in depth, and so on (Ferguson, Chung, & Weigold, 1985). Each participant’s mean score across the 15 items (˛ = .86) was calculated to create an overall need for cognition score; scores ranged from 1.80 to 4.87 on a scale of 1–5 (M = 3.44, S.D. = .54), with a higher score indicating a higher need for cognition. To ensure that any effects attributed to celebrity status were simply from being Dennis Quaid, and not from how much participants liked him, participants were asked to indicate on a 5-point semantic differential scale how likeable/unlikeable they found the candidate they viewed. T-tests indicated no significant differences in how likeable the candidates were (MQuaid = 3.10, MEller = 3.22, t = −1.14, p = .26), nor was likeability correlated with celebrity status (r = .06, p = .26). 7. Results Many Hollywood actors are perceived, accurately or not, to be liberal, which raises the possibility that Dennis Quaid might be favored by participants who identify themselves as more liberal. Therefore, a correlation was computed between participants’ political ideology and intention to vote. The overall relationship was small (r = .08) and not significant (p = .10). The correlation was also computed while looking only at participants who were exposed to Quaid (r = .04, p = .56), and then only with those exposed to Eller (r = .19, p < .01), revealing that there was no relationship between being liberal and choosing to vote for the
Table 1 Mean results for intention to vote and significant differences among conditions. Celebrity with substantive article Celebrity with non-substantive article Unknown with substantive article Unknown with non-substantive article a b c
M = 2.72a , b M = 2.48c M = 2.22a M = 2.20b , c
p < .001. p < .001. p < .05.
Hollywood celebrity, and that with respect to the unknown candidate, conservative participants were more likely to vote for him. It was therefore determined that the decision to use Dennis Quaid as the celebrity in this study was not affected by any perceived political leanings, whether to the right or left. Nonetheless, participants’ political ideology was controlled for in subsequent analyses. To test Hypothesis 1, which proposed that participants will report being more likely to vote for the celebrity candidate than the unknown candidate, regardless of the substance level of the political platform, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted with the dependent variable of intention to vote, and celebrity status and level of substance as the independent variables. A significant main effect was obtained for celebrity, F (1,420) = 31.31, p < .001, Partial Eta Squared = .07. Participants indicated being significantly more likely to vote for Dennis Quaid (M = 2.60) than the unknown candidate, Tim Eller (M = 2.21). A significant main effect was also obtained for substance level of the platform, F (1,420) = 3.84, p = .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, with participants indicating they were more likely to vote for the candidate with the more substantive platform (M = 2.48) than the less substantive one (M = 2.34). There was no significant interaction effect between celebrity status and substance level of the article, F (1,420) = 2.48, p = .12. Thus, hypothesis 1 is supported: participants were more likely to vote for the celebrity, regardless of platform. The ANOVA revealed a significant difference among the groups in intention to vote, F = 12.456, p < .001, such that those exposed to the substantive article with the celebrity (M = 2.72, S.D. = .69) were significantly more likely to vote for the candidate than both those who saw the celebrity candidate with the non-substantive article (M = 2.48, S.D. = .78) and those who saw the unknown candidate with the substantive article (M = 2.22, S.D. = .69) (please see Table 1). Likeability of the candidate, participants’ political ideology, and age of the participant were also entered as covariates into an ANCOVA with celebrity status and substance of political platform as independent variables and intention to vote as the dependent variable. The main effects for both celebrity status, F (1, 420) = 33.5, p < .001, Partial Eta Squared = .07, and substance of political platform, F (1, 420) = 5.18, p < .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, remained significant, and the interaction between them was not significant (p = .10). Thus, regardless of participant age, participant political ideology, and likeability of the candidate, people are still more likely to vote for a celebrity and more likely to vote for a more substantive candidate. There was no significant main effect for likeability (p = .68),
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meaning the decision to vote for a candidate was not a function of how well-liked he was. There was a main effect for political ideology, F (1, 420) = 5.86, p < .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, but as described above, this relationship is driven by more conservative voters being more likely to vote for the unknown candidate. There were no interaction effects between ideology and celebrity status or any of the other predictor variables on intention to vote. In answer to RQ1, which considered whether age affected intention to vote, a significant main effect was found for age F (1, 420) = 5.18, p < .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, such that younger participants were more likely to intend to vote for a candidate than older ones. This relationship was driven by the correlation between age and intention to vote among participants who were asked about the celebrity candidate (r = .13, p = .05), not those asked about the unknown candidate (r = .08, p = .27). The answer to RQ1 is that younger people are more likely to vote for a celebrity than older people, even when controlling for political ideology, substance of the political platform, and likeability of the candidate. Interestingly, although recent years have seen an upsurge in political activism among young people, the correlation between age and political involvement was significant in this study (r = −.14, p < .01), with older people more politically involved than younger ones. To answer RQs 2 and 3, political involvement and need for cognition were considered as covariates in an ANCOVA with intention to vote as the dependent variable and celebrity status and substance of platform as the independent variables. Neither level of political involvement, F (1,420) = .03, p = .88 nor need for cognition, F (1,420) = .67, p = .41 were significant covariates, and celebrity status and substance of political platform remained significant predictors. This means the answer to RQs 2 and 3 is ‘no’: people who are less politically active (low motivation) and who have a lower need for cognition (low ability) were no more likely to vote for the celebrity candidate than those higher in these traits, although overall, people are more likely to vote for the celebrity than the unknown candidate. This is not irrefutable evidence of celebrity status being used in central processing, but it does raise the question of how the knowledge that someone is a celebrity is used by deeper thinkers and the more politically informed. Finally, a regression model was run with the predictor variables that had emerged as significant (celebrity status, substance level of platform, political ideology, and age) as independent variables, and intention to vote as the dependent variable. As seen in Table 2, celebrity status is the strongest predictor of whether someone chooses to vote for a candidate. It appears that all of these factors matter in the decision to vote, but independently of each other. 8. Discussion This study sought to empirically test conventional wisdom that being recognizable as a celebrity is advantageous to a political candidate, and if so, to consider how voters use celebrity status in their decision-making. Drawing on two literatures, arguments were put forth that celebrity status might act as a heuristic in peripheral processing, or
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Table 2 Regression of the relationships between celebrity status, substance of political platform, participant age, and participant political ideology in relation to intention to vote for a candidate. Intention to vote, unstandardized beta (S.E.) Celebrity status Substance of political platform Participant age Participant political ideology R2 * **
.40 (.07)** .16 (.07)* .02 (.01)* .09 (.04)* .09
p < .05. p < .001.
that it might be a factor in more effortful deliberation. The findings suggest the former is true, and provide some interesting indications that the latter could be as well, although more research is needed to explore this. People were in fact more likely to vote for a recognizable name and face than an unknown candidate, and this was true regardless of the substance level of the political platform presented. A main effect for substance indicates that people did value specific information about a candidate’s positions, but celebrity status had influence independently of this, suggesting peripheral processing of the fame. Of course, the use of only one celebrity in the study limits the generalizability of the findings, so this study can only state that this true in the case of Dennis Quaid. However, as a hypothetical candidate, Quaid appears to have had little ‘baggage’ beyond his fame: he was rated as no more attractive or likeable than the non-celebrity, and did not appeal more to liberals, despite his connection to Hollywood. His age makes it unlikely that it was similarity or popularity (his likeability scores were close to neutral) with younger participants that increased intention to vote for him. Thus, while future research should certainly make use of multiple celebrities, the results found for this one should not be discounted. Although the higher intention to vote for a celebrity regardless of substance suggests peripheral processing, individual characteristics that would seemingly correspond to lower levels of motivation and ability did not emerge as significant, which was somewhat surprising. If peripheral processing were occurring, the ELM would predict that it would be most likely to occur for people who do not like to think extensively about decisions (low need for cognition) and who do not like to think about politics (low political involvement). Yet neither of these proved to be the case. One possible explanation for this is that fame is such an easy heuristic that it is used by even the politically astute and deep thinkers. There is really no way from the data here to discount this explanation, especially given that the validity of using political involvement and NfC to represent motivation and ability is not well established. Another possibility is that celebrity matters to more serious thinkers and bigger political wonks, but in a different way. These voters may be deliberating about what they know about the familiar candidate in order to decide for whom they will vote, which is why NfC and political involvement were not significant. To be clear, this study cannot prove this type of central processing is occurring,
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but the data do hint at the potential for low-information rationality (Popkin, 1994) among some participants. Either way, being influenced by celebrity status appears not to be unique to the mentally lazy or the politically ignorant. This finding suggests that it is important that more research in this area be conducted to answer the question of how celebrity status functions in motivated and capable people’s decision making, and to provide empirical evidence of low information rationality and an electorate that can inform themselves from things gleaned from the mass media. To do this, future studies should test the validity of using political involvement and NfC to represent motivation and ability, and if necessary, find other ways to establish central processing of fame. At the same time, the limited scope and external validity of this study should be addressed, for example by conducting research using multiple celebrities, and by varying the arena from which the celebrity comes (e.g., sports, movies), the length and valence of their fame before running for office, and their demographics. Only after such research will it be evident if there is a strategic take-away for political communication specialists spearheading celebrity campaigns. This is an important direction for future research in the current political environment, where young adults written off for so long as apathetic are becoming more involved in politics. In this study, age was a significant covariate, such that younger people were more likely to intend to vote for a candidate. This is not surprising in the case of the celebrity, given that young adults are notoriously interested in celebrities. But interaction effects involving voter age were not significant, meaning young voters were more likely to vote in general, a promising finding. Although in this study, older people were significantly more politically involved than younger, the multimedia information society in which young adults are comfortable means they are likely to have a store of knowledge
about political candidates and celebrities at their fingertips. Rather than assume they will do nothing more than use name recognition as a reason to check a box next to that name—although there is some reason to suggest some will do exactly that—it is exciting to think that extant knowledge will in some cases be used to make a more informed decision, and that the interactivity of these technologies may increase the influence of those decisions on others. In this case, political strategists are faced with the possibility that while political knowledge helps people pick appropriate candidates based on issues and positions relevant to them (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Meirick, 2005), the voter’s knowledge of the celebrity running for office may play a significant role in deliberation as well, and it may be a mistake to assume no information beyond the superficial is important. This study raises some intriguing questions, but can go no further that that. In addition to the suggestions made above, future studies can eliminate some of the ecological shortcomings of this one by testing extensive political campaign material rather than just one article; by using multiple media rather than just newspapers; and by exposing participants to both (or all) candidate options, not just one and then requiring them to make a voting decision without knowing who else was running for office. Completing a questionnaire about who one would vote for is not equivalent to normal voting behavior in which a voter must actively pursue the appropriate voting venue and show up at the specified date and time. There are many more variables that could be measured and controlled for, such as trustworthiness and expertise. Despite these limitations, the study makes clear that there can be some benefit to having a recognizable name, and concludes with a call for future research in how potential voters make sense of celebrity status.
Appendix A. Fictitious newspaper articles used as stimuli
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Celebrity candidate/substantive platform
Celebrity candidate/Non-substantive platform
Unknown candidate/substantive platform
Unknown candidate/non-substantive platform
References Abram, S. (2008). Is there such a thing as information overload? Information Outlook, 12(2), 25–26. Alexander, J. C. (2010). Barack Obama meets celebrity metaphor. Society, 47, 410–418. Atkin, C. & Block, M. (1983). Effectiveness of celebrity endorsers. Journal of Advertising Research, 23(1), 57–61. Austin, E. W., Van de Vord, R., Pinkleton, B. E. & Epstein, E. (2008). Celebrity endorsements and their potential to motivate young voters. Mass Communication and Society, 11, 420–436. Buckingham, D. (1997). News media, political socialization and popular citizenship: Towards a new agenda. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 14, 344–366.
Bucy, E. & Grabe, M. E. (2007). Taking television seriously: A sound and image bite analysis of presidential campaign coverage, 1992–2004. Journal of Communication, 57, 652–675. Cacioppo, J. & Petty, R. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116–131. Cacioppo, J., Petty, R., Feinstein, J. & Jarvis, W. (1996). Dispositional difference in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychology Bulletin, 119, 197–253. Delli Carpini, M. X. (2000). Gen.com: Youth, civic engagement, and the new information environment. Political Communication, 17, 341–349. Delli Carpini, M. X. & Keeter, S. (1996). What Americans know about politics and why it matters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Elliot, A. (1998). Celebrity and political psychology. Political Psychology, 19(4), 833–852. Ferguson, M., Chung, M. & Weigold, M. (1985). Need for cognition and the medium dependency components of reliance and exposure. In Paper presented at the meeting of International Communication Association May, Honolulu, HI. Friedman, H. H. & Friedman, L. (1979). Endorser effectiveness by product type. Journal of Advertising Research, 19(5), 63–71. Greer, J. (1996). Unleashing the watchdogs on political advertising: The influence of need for cognition, argument quality and source credibility on newspaper adwatch effectiveness. Published dissertation. University of Florida, under the supervision of Dr. Weigold. Lang, A. (2000). The limited capacity model of mediated message processing. Journal of Communication, 50(1), 46–70. Longo, N. & Meyer, R. (2006). College student and politics: A literature review. College Park, MD: Center for Information and Research of Civic Learning and Engagement. Lupia, A. & McCubbins, M. D. (1998). The Democratic dilemma: Can citizens learn what they need to know? New York: Cambridge University Press. Marks, M. (2002). The King’s new bodies: Simulating consent in the age of celebrity. New Political Science, 24, 371–394. McCracken, G. (1989). Who is the celebrity endorser? Cultural foundations of the endorsement process,. Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 310–321. McGuire, W. (1989). Theoretical foundations of campaigns. In R. Rice, & C. Atkins (Eds.), Public communication campaigns (2nd ed., pp. 43–65). Sage: Beverly Hills, CA. McKernan, B. (2011). Politics and celebrity: A sociological understanding. Sociology Compass, 5(3), 190–202. Meirick, P. (2005). Political knowledge and sponsorship in backlash from party- and candidate-sponsored attacks. Communication Reports, 18(2), 75–84. Pease, A. & Brewer, P. R. (2008). The Oprah factor: The effects of a celebrity endorsement in a Presidential primary campaign. International Journal of Press/Politics, 13(4), 386–400.
Petty, R. & Cacioppo, J. (1981). Attitudes and persuasion: Classic and contemporary approaches:. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C Brown Co. Publishers. Petty, R. & Cacioppo, J. (1983). Central and peripheral routes to advertising effectiveness: The moderating role of involvement. Journal of Consumer Research, 10, 134–148. Petty, R. & Cacioppo, J. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude change. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Co. Publishers. Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. (2002). Audience fragmented and skeptical: The tough job of communicating with voters. Popkin, S. L. (1994). The reasoning voter: Communication and persuasion in political campaigns (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scherer, M. (2011). Can they win, one Tweet at a time? Time, 177(May), 21. Smalley, S., & Kliff, S. (2008). How low with they go? With ‘elitist’ a choice slur, candidates are trying to win over the new “It” demographic: ‘lowinfo voters.’ Newsweek, 151(June), 34. Snell, P. (2010). Emerging adult civic and political disengagement: A longitudinal analysis of lack of involvement with politics. Journal of Adolescent Research, 25, 258–287. Strack, F., Werth, L. & Deutsch, R. (2006). Reflective and impulsive determinants of consumer behavior. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 16(3), 205–216. West, D. & Orman, J. (2003). Celebrity politics. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Lara Zwarun is an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri St Louis. Her research focuses on mass media effects and policy. Her work has appeared in journals including American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and Mass Communication and Society. Angela Torrey, M.A., is a Marketing Communication Manager at RPG Direct, providing public relations expertise for a leading pet care supplier. This research was conducted as part of the second author’s Master’s thesis, under the guidance of the first author.
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The Social Science Journal journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soscij
Somebody versus nobody: An exploration of the role of celebrity status in an election Lara Zwarun a,∗ , Angela Torrey b a b
Department of Communication, University of Missouri - St. Louis, 1 University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121, USA Marketing Communication Manager, RPG Direct, Dallas, TX, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 23 June 2010 Received in revised form 23 May 2011 Accepted 26 June 2011 Available online 22 October 2011
a b s t r a c t This study examines the role celebrity status may play in potential voters’ evaluation of a political candidate presented in a newspaper article. Participants indicated greater intention to vote for a candidate who was a recognizable Hollywood actor than an unknown candidate in a political race, regardless of how substantive the political information provided about the candidate was. This suggests that familiarity with a celebrity can act as a heuristic in peripheral processing. Younger people were more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than older voters, but how liberal or conservative participants are was not a significant factor in the decision to vote for the celebrity. Nor did participants’ need for cognition or level of political involvement predict intention to vote for the celebrity, suggesting that celebrity status is meaningful to motivated and thoughtful voters as well as those who are less motivated and informed. The possibility is raised that this could be an indication of celebrity status being used as a component of deliberate political decision-making, and future research in this direction is suggested. © 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Little empirical research has been conducted on the role celebrity status plays in an election in which one of the candidates is an established Hollywood actor, despite a number of such candidates in the modern political landscape. Common sense suggests that being recognizable as a celebrity could be an advantage in a political race, but this is not established, nor is it known how such an advantage might work. This study is a preliminary attempt to consider these questions, albeit with an experiment involving only one celebrity, the actor Dennis Quaid. The study seeks to establish if in fact people are more likely to vote for a famous Hollywood actor running for office than an unknown candidate, and whether this differs by age, given
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 314 516 6725; fax: +1 314 516 5816. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (L. Zwarun), [email protected] (A. Torrey).
that young adults are often avid consumers of pop culture but may be less involved with politics (Snell, 2010). By manipulating the level of substance in the political information provided about the candidates, the study explores whether any advantage afforded by being a familiar face seems to result from peripheral processing. Participants’ level of political involvement and need for cognition are also controlled for, in an effort to learn more about whether celebrity status might be used by some people as an element of more engaged decision-making. 2. Celebrities in politics Celebrity involvement in politics is not new, but is a growing trend in recent years (McKernan, 2011; West & Orman, 2003). Several types of political celebrities have been identified, including political newsworthies (politicians skilled at public relations and self-promotion); legacies (children or spouses of former politicians); event celebrities (victims who gain notoriety overnight due to a
0362-3319/$ – see front matter © 2011 Western Social Science Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.soscij.2011.06.005
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tragedy, event, or life situation); and famed non-politicians (known in fields outside of politics who run for office, such as actors, singers, business people, athletes, and astronauts) (West & Orman, 2003). While not all celebrity politicians are from the entertainment industry, numerous Hollywood celebrities have run for political office in recent years (Elliot, 1998; McKernan, 2011). For example, action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger won the gubernatorial race in California in 2003, and Fred Thomson, an actor known for his role on the television show Law and Order, campaigned for the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential election. While not always successful at the polls, celebrities draw considerably more media attention than mainstream politicians (West & Orman, 2003). Heavy media presence and cultural fascination with the lives of celebrities (West & Orman, 2003) may cause people to believe they know a celebrity, fostering a sense of intimacy that could confer an advantage to someone in a political race. In the case of Hollywood actors, the type or quality of the fame achieved before entering politics can undoubtedly color the impressions voters have of a celebrity politician. For example, after starring almost exclusively as an action hero in his movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger was hailed by some as “The Governator” of California, suggesting his suitability to solving political problems with tough action. However, even in the case of someone with a more mild and neutral celebrity persona, just having a recognizable name and face might still be enough to give him an advantage over an unknown candidate. It is this kind of fame—familiarity with an actor’s name and face—that this study sought to examine. 3. Celebrity status as a peripheral cue People have limited capacity for information and simply cannot engage in highly involved decision-making in every choice they face (e.g., Lang, 2000). According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981), if their ability and motivation to process information are high, people may carefully evaluate the quality of a message (central processing), but much of the time, people act as “cognitive misers” by engaging in peripheral processing, meaning they tend to rely on superficial cues in the persuasion content that can affect their attitudes without requiring processing of message arguments (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981). It is possible that celebrity status functions as a peripheral cue in political decision-making in much the same way that brand names serve as shortcuts or cues to purchasing decisions (Strack, Werth, & Deutsch, 2006). In this case, when voters are faced with a Hollywood actor as a candidate in a race, fame would emerge as a salient detail, enabling those low in ability and/or motivation to quickly judge the candidates, rather than making an effort to centrally process political information by researching issues and candidates. If celebrity status does in fact function as an easy shorthand or cue, this suggests that the quality of the information provided about the candidate will be less important than it would be in central processing (McGuire, 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1983). This study therefore manipulated
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not only whether the candidate was a Hollywood actor or an unknown, but also the level of detail in the political views provided about the candidate. If participants show greater willingness to vote for a famous candidate, even if the description of his political platform lacks substance, this suggests peripheral processing. Due to of the importance of motivation and ability in determining whether central or peripheral processing occurs (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986), this study also considered the situational and dispositional factors of political involvement and need for cognition. People who find politics fascinating are motivated to engage in central processing with respect to politics and well-equipped to do so. There are also people whose nature makes them deliberators; these people are said to be high in need for cognition, or individual preference to actively think and evaluate information when it is not necessary (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). On the other hand, those low in need for cognition are characterized as “more likely to rely on others (e.g., celebrities and experts), heuristics, or social comparison processing” (Cacioppo, Petty, Feinstein, & Jarvis, 1996, p. 198). If fame acts as a peripheral cue, we would expect people who are high in political involvement as well as people who have a high need for cognition to be less susceptible to the influence of celebrity and be no more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than a non-celebrity. 4. The role of voter age If celebrity status acts as a peripheral cue in voting decisions involving celebrity politicians, there are several reasons to believe this might be more likely occur with young adult voters (i.e., those in their late teens or 20 s) than older voters. For many years, young adults have been considered low in ability and motivation when it comes to politics, with evidence of apathy, lack of public affairs knowledge, and lack of civic engagement among the 18–24 year old demographic of the American electorate (Buckingham, 1997; Delli Carpini, 2000; Longo & Meyer, 2006; Snell, 2010). Politically uninterested and uninvolved young adults may not have the ability or motivation to seek out and filter the vast number of political media messages associated with political campaigns (Abram, 2008), which could make them susceptible to fame as a heuristic. Further, people in their 20 s are often interested in celebrities, and are the primary audience for entertainment and celebrity news (Pew Research Center, 2002). Without thoughtful engagement or substantive learning, this audience may instead rely on the fame of celebrity candidates (Marks, 2002) to form impressions and make voting decisions about candidates. On the other hand, being a cognitive miser is not unique to young adults. For many Americans, politics is a convoluted topic that involves difficult to comprehend issues such as economics and foreign policy. The dizzying array of political messages and media choices encountered in the days and months leading up to an election can no doubt be daunting to people of all ages, who may find them too much to process thoroughly. The use of celebrity as a heuristic in superficial voting decisions may not be the purview of just young adults.
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Nor is it necessarily true that most young people are politically apathetic: in fact, there is evidence that political apathy is decreasing among the young. The 2008 presidential election generated higher levels of involvement in politics among young adults than previous races had (Austin, Van de Vord, Pinkleton, & Epstein, 2008), largely due to the popularity of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. However, the excitement among young voters over the campaign and Obama’s subsequent victory do not appear to be solely the result of celebrity status being used as a peripheral cue. Despite the fact that Republican candidate John McCain’s advisors attempted to discredit Obama during the election with a television ad that accused him of being a celebrity—with the implication being that being a celebrity is the opposite of a legitimate political candidate (Alexander, 2010)—Obama’s popularity stemmed from a substantive political platform; his celebrity status came after his presidential run began (Alexander, 2010). Thus, the 2008 presidential election serves as evidence that young people do not always approach politics in a superficial manner. And as politicians from President Obama on down turn to social media such as Twitter and Facebook to run campaigns that actively target young voters (e.g., Newt Gingrich’s announcement that he was entering the 2012 political race), political involvement among the young may continue to increase, making them no more susceptible to using celebrity status as a peripheral cue than older voters. It is therefore necessary to explore if voter age plays a role in processing celebrity status. 5. Celebrity status as component in deliberative decision-making It is possible that celebrity status does confer an advantage such that a recognizable actor will be more likely to receive votes, but that this is not a function of celebrity operating as a peripheral cue. Increasingly, there is a theoretical rationale for the possibility that celebrity status may be part of more deliberative decision-making. In the months leading up to the 2008 Presidential election, a Newsweek headline reported on “candidates trying to win over the new ‘It’ demographic: low-info voters” (Smalley and Kliff, 2008, p.34). The word ‘It’ refers to a desirable demographic that it is popular or trendy to pursue. “Low-info” refers to voters who approach decisions about political candidates with limited information. While it is often assumed that people with less information on which to base a voting decision are at a disadvantage relative to people with more information (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996), Popkin (1994) has advanced the idea that voters are completely capable of using substitutes or shortcuts for the vast amounts of information that circulate in an election to engage in reasonable decision-making about a candidate. This process, which he calls “low information rationality,” is thought to result in decisions that are just as informed and high quality as ones that would be made had the large amount of information actually been processed (Lupia and McCubbins, 1998). In other words, this is not the same thing as using celebrity status as a shortcut to avoid deliberative thought; rather, the candidate’s status as a celebrity acts as shorthand for whatever is already known
of him/her, encapsulating that store of knowledge so that it can be readily factored into evaluation of the candidate. Past research has considered political party affiliation and expert advice as examples of low-information rationality shortcuts (Lupia and McCubbins, 1998). Celebrity status could function in the same way, even in the case of celebrities for whom people might not have an extensive store of relevant information (who have not been vocal about politicized issues, for example, nor embroiled in personal scandals that speak poorly of their characters). There is some research to support the idea that celebrity status in a political candidate can play more of a role in political decision-making than just as a shortcut past deliberation. For example, research on celebrity endorsements in advertising has shown they are most effective when there is a clear relationship between the endorser and the product s/he is endorsing (Friedman & Friedman, 1979), and that celebrity endorsers are particularly good matches for products with high social and psychological risk (Atkin & Block, 1983; McCracken, 1989). This suggests that consumers are thoughtful to some degree in their processing of celebrities in advertisements, as opposed to having an automatic positive reaction as might be expected with peripheral processing. In this sense, celebrity status is not a peripheral cue, it is a piece of information that is cognitively processed and used to make informed decisions. Bucy and Grabe (2007) argue that today’s citizens are capable of making reliable judgments about politics through information gleaned from images and impressions in the media. Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement of Barack Obama for president increased people’s intention to vote for him, but not because of a knee-jerk reaction to Oprah’s fame (Pease & Brewer, 2008). Rather, voters drew on information about Oprah’s celebrity they had gathered from non-political parts of their lives (e.g., knowledge of the influence of her book club) to determine that her endorsement increased the viability of Obama being elected, and this assessment led them to be more likely to vote for him themselves. Austin et al. (2008) found that celebrity ‘get out the vote’ promotions were associated with less complacency and increased information-seeking regarding an election; this active pursuit of more information may be driven by celebrity running for office as well (McKernan, 2011). In these examples, celebrity status seems to be part of effortful, albeit condensed, processing on the part of rational actors, not a crutch for cognitive miserliness. Purposive processing of celebrity status in voting decisions may begin to occur with more frequency with politicians’ increasing use of new technologies that connect people and enable them to share quotes, video clips, and news, often in real time (e.g., Scherer, 2011). This potential for interactivity offers people an opportunity to become involved in politics in a meaningful and deliberative way, in a forum where celebrity status is relevant and important, increasing the likelihood of central processing of celebrity status. If celebrity functions as a peripheral cue, it would make sense that this would be most likely to occur for people low in ability and motivation to process more complex political information. In this study, need for cognition, or one’s propensity to think and deliberate, is used to represent
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ability. Motivation, in the context of this study, is represented by pre-existing political involvement, suggesting an interest in and commitment to politics. If people who are low in need for cognition and/or low in political involvement are more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate, this indicates that peripheral processing may be at play. On the other hand, if need for cognition and political involvement do not predict intention to vote for a celebrity candidate, but people are more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than a non-celebrity nonetheless, it is possible that this is a sign that celebrity is being used as a part of central or deliberative processing. This study therefore poses the following hypothesis and research questions: Hypothesis 1. Potential voters will report being more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than an unknown candidate, regardless of how substantive the political information provided about the candidates is. RQ1: Are younger people more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than older people? RQ2: Are less politically involved people more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than those who are more politically involved? RQ3: Are people with lower need for cognition more likely to vote for a celebrity candidate than those with higher need for cognition? 6. Methods Participants in this study were 424 undergraduate communication students at a large public university in the Southwest. The majority (76.9%) of the sample was between the ages of 21 and 29, with 14.6% of participants either 19 or 20 and 8.5% ages 30–54. The mean age was 24 (S.D. = 4.40). The sample skewed female (60.8%), and 78.1% reported being registered voters. In terms of political views, the sample was about evenly split among those considering themselves neutral (36.3%), very or somewhat liberal (35.9%), and very or somewhat conservative (27.9%). Complying with the university’s Institutional Review Board, informed consent was obtained for all participants. 6.1. Procedure and stimulus Participants were recruited to partake in a 2 (celebrity vs. unknown candidate) × 2 (substantive vs. nonsubstantive message) factorial design experiment to evaluate the role of celebrity status and message quality on voting decisions. Each participant was randomly assigned to receive one of four versions of a fictional newspaper article about a person running for mayor, accompanied by a photograph of the candidate (please see Appendix A). A fictional political race was used to avoid any influence from preexisting attitudes about a real election. Two of the four articles featured the name and photograph of a celebrity (actor Dennis Quaid) as the person running for mayor; the other two featured a photograph of an unknown candidate with a fictitious name (Tim Eller). Conducting this study with only one celebrity, while a
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logistical necessity, is a limitation with respect to generalizability. However, Dennis Quaid was carefully chosen as the celebrity stimulus for this early-stage attempt to identify the effect of celebrity status for several reasons. Quaid is in his 50 s and his movies are not generally targeted specifically to the young adults making up the bulk of the study’s participants, so while he was familiar to most, he was not likely to be somebody that they had many strong opinions about that would influence their assessment of him as a political candidate. He had not been involved in any major scandals or political movements at the time of the study, although recognizing that many Hollywood celebrities are often assumed to be liberal, participants’ political leanings were controlled for in the study’s analyses. It was possible to find a stock photograph of an unknown man who closely resembled Quaid, so that both candidates are Caucasian males of comparable age, with similar hairstyles, smiling in an above the waist shot, and wearing a suit and tie. T-tests confirmed that the two were perceived to be comparably attractive (on a 5-point scale, MQuaid = 3.60, MEller = 3.67; t Y = −.84, p Y = .40). Thus, while the use of one celebrity limits the ability to generalize to celebrities or Hollywood actors in general, the study was designed so that findings could be attributed to Quaid’s familiarity as an actor, not other variables. One set of news articles described the candidate’s political platform with specific details. Controversial issues such as abortion and religion were excluded in favor of issues such as economic growth, education reform and job creation. The other set of articles provided no details about the candidate’s platform, they just announced his candidacy. Thus, the four conditions were celebrity/substantive article, celebrity/non-substantive article, unknown candidate/substantive article, and unknown candidate/nonsubstantive article. To determine whether the stimuli did in fact vary in terms of celebrity status and the degree of substance of the article in its discussion of the candidate’s political platform, a manipulation check was performed. Each person was asked to indicate on a fivepoint semantic differential scale how known/unknown the mayoral candidate was, and how substantive/nonsubstantive and informative/uninformative the article was. Responses to the latter two items were summed to create one measure of substance ranging from 2 to 10. T-tests indicated that participants perceived the celebrity candidate as significantly more well-known than the fictional candidate (Mknown = 4.29, Munknown = 2.72, t = 5.77, p < .000), and the more detailed news article as significantly more substantive than the less detailed one (Msubstantive = 7.36, Mnon-substantive = 3.29, t = 11.95, p < .000). The experiment was pilot tested on a separate convenience sample of 34 university students. For the experiment, participants received one version of the stimulus article and a pen and paper questionnaire. They were able to refer to the article and photograph while answering the questionnaire. 6.2. Measures The dependent variable was intention to vote for a candidate, measured by asking participants after they read the
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news article, “If the election were right now, how likely are you to vote for this candidate?” Participants were asked to indicate a response choice of “very likely”; “somewhat likely”; “somewhat unlikely”; or “unlikely.” An opt-out or ‘don’t know’ response was not included. The questionnaire also asked participants to indicate their gender, age, whether they were registered voters, and on a 5-point scale ranging from very liberal to very conservative, their political views, which was used to control for participants’ political ideology in the analyses. To examine the role of level of political involvement, Greer’s (1996) scale was used. The scale contains eleven items, six related to political action, and five about communication about politics. Participants indicated on a scale from “never” (1) to “always” (5) how often they engage in activities such as talking with friends and family about politics, voting, working for a political campaign, and reading or watching political stories in the news media. After taking the mean of the responses to the 11 items (˛ = .83), respondents’ political involvement scores ranged from 1.00 to 4.55 (M = 2.42, S.D. = .60), with a higher number indicating higher political involvement. To determine each participant’s personal disposition to enjoy or dislike cognitive thought, respondents were asked to rate the extent to which 15 statements pertaining to how curious and thoughtful they are characterize them. On a five-point Likert scale, in which 1 meant that the subject “strongly disagreed” with the statement and 5 meant the subject “strongly agreed,” respondents noted how much they like tasks that require little thought, prefer complex problems to simple problems, try to anticipate and avoid situations where there is a likely chance that they will have to think in depth, and so on (Ferguson, Chung, & Weigold, 1985). Each participant’s mean score across the 15 items (˛ = .86) was calculated to create an overall need for cognition score; scores ranged from 1.80 to 4.87 on a scale of 1–5 (M = 3.44, S.D. = .54), with a higher score indicating a higher need for cognition. To ensure that any effects attributed to celebrity status were simply from being Dennis Quaid, and not from how much participants liked him, participants were asked to indicate on a 5-point semantic differential scale how likeable/unlikeable they found the candidate they viewed. T-tests indicated no significant differences in how likeable the candidates were (MQuaid = 3.10, MEller = 3.22, t = −1.14, p = .26), nor was likeability correlated with celebrity status (r = .06, p = .26). 7. Results Many Hollywood actors are perceived, accurately or not, to be liberal, which raises the possibility that Dennis Quaid might be favored by participants who identify themselves as more liberal. Therefore, a correlation was computed between participants’ political ideology and intention to vote. The overall relationship was small (r = .08) and not significant (p = .10). The correlation was also computed while looking only at participants who were exposed to Quaid (r = .04, p = .56), and then only with those exposed to Eller (r = .19, p < .01), revealing that there was no relationship between being liberal and choosing to vote for the
Table 1 Mean results for intention to vote and significant differences among conditions. Celebrity with substantive article Celebrity with non-substantive article Unknown with substantive article Unknown with non-substantive article a b c
M = 2.72a , b M = 2.48c M = 2.22a M = 2.20b , c
p < .001. p < .001. p < .05.
Hollywood celebrity, and that with respect to the unknown candidate, conservative participants were more likely to vote for him. It was therefore determined that the decision to use Dennis Quaid as the celebrity in this study was not affected by any perceived political leanings, whether to the right or left. Nonetheless, participants’ political ideology was controlled for in subsequent analyses. To test Hypothesis 1, which proposed that participants will report being more likely to vote for the celebrity candidate than the unknown candidate, regardless of the substance level of the political platform, an Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was conducted with the dependent variable of intention to vote, and celebrity status and level of substance as the independent variables. A significant main effect was obtained for celebrity, F (1,420) = 31.31, p < .001, Partial Eta Squared = .07. Participants indicated being significantly more likely to vote for Dennis Quaid (M = 2.60) than the unknown candidate, Tim Eller (M = 2.21). A significant main effect was also obtained for substance level of the platform, F (1,420) = 3.84, p = .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, with participants indicating they were more likely to vote for the candidate with the more substantive platform (M = 2.48) than the less substantive one (M = 2.34). There was no significant interaction effect between celebrity status and substance level of the article, F (1,420) = 2.48, p = .12. Thus, hypothesis 1 is supported: participants were more likely to vote for the celebrity, regardless of platform. The ANOVA revealed a significant difference among the groups in intention to vote, F = 12.456, p < .001, such that those exposed to the substantive article with the celebrity (M = 2.72, S.D. = .69) were significantly more likely to vote for the candidate than both those who saw the celebrity candidate with the non-substantive article (M = 2.48, S.D. = .78) and those who saw the unknown candidate with the substantive article (M = 2.22, S.D. = .69) (please see Table 1). Likeability of the candidate, participants’ political ideology, and age of the participant were also entered as covariates into an ANCOVA with celebrity status and substance of political platform as independent variables and intention to vote as the dependent variable. The main effects for both celebrity status, F (1, 420) = 33.5, p < .001, Partial Eta Squared = .07, and substance of political platform, F (1, 420) = 5.18, p < .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, remained significant, and the interaction between them was not significant (p = .10). Thus, regardless of participant age, participant political ideology, and likeability of the candidate, people are still more likely to vote for a celebrity and more likely to vote for a more substantive candidate. There was no significant main effect for likeability (p = .68),
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meaning the decision to vote for a candidate was not a function of how well-liked he was. There was a main effect for political ideology, F (1, 420) = 5.86, p < .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, but as described above, this relationship is driven by more conservative voters being more likely to vote for the unknown candidate. There were no interaction effects between ideology and celebrity status or any of the other predictor variables on intention to vote. In answer to RQ1, which considered whether age affected intention to vote, a significant main effect was found for age F (1, 420) = 5.18, p < .05, Partial Eta Squared = .01, such that younger participants were more likely to intend to vote for a candidate than older ones. This relationship was driven by the correlation between age and intention to vote among participants who were asked about the celebrity candidate (r = .13, p = .05), not those asked about the unknown candidate (r = .08, p = .27). The answer to RQ1 is that younger people are more likely to vote for a celebrity than older people, even when controlling for political ideology, substance of the political platform, and likeability of the candidate. Interestingly, although recent years have seen an upsurge in political activism among young people, the correlation between age and political involvement was significant in this study (r = −.14, p < .01), with older people more politically involved than younger ones. To answer RQs 2 and 3, political involvement and need for cognition were considered as covariates in an ANCOVA with intention to vote as the dependent variable and celebrity status and substance of platform as the independent variables. Neither level of political involvement, F (1,420) = .03, p = .88 nor need for cognition, F (1,420) = .67, p = .41 were significant covariates, and celebrity status and substance of political platform remained significant predictors. This means the answer to RQs 2 and 3 is ‘no’: people who are less politically active (low motivation) and who have a lower need for cognition (low ability) were no more likely to vote for the celebrity candidate than those higher in these traits, although overall, people are more likely to vote for the celebrity than the unknown candidate. This is not irrefutable evidence of celebrity status being used in central processing, but it does raise the question of how the knowledge that someone is a celebrity is used by deeper thinkers and the more politically informed. Finally, a regression model was run with the predictor variables that had emerged as significant (celebrity status, substance level of platform, political ideology, and age) as independent variables, and intention to vote as the dependent variable. As seen in Table 2, celebrity status is the strongest predictor of whether someone chooses to vote for a candidate. It appears that all of these factors matter in the decision to vote, but independently of each other. 8. Discussion This study sought to empirically test conventional wisdom that being recognizable as a celebrity is advantageous to a political candidate, and if so, to consider how voters use celebrity status in their decision-making. Drawing on two literatures, arguments were put forth that celebrity status might act as a heuristic in peripheral processing, or
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Table 2 Regression of the relationships between celebrity status, substance of political platform, participant age, and participant political ideology in relation to intention to vote for a candidate. Intention to vote, unstandardized beta (S.E.) Celebrity status Substance of political platform Participant age Participant political ideology R2 * **
.40 (.07)** .16 (.07)* .02 (.01)* .09 (.04)* .09
p < .05. p < .001.
that it might be a factor in more effortful deliberation. The findings suggest the former is true, and provide some interesting indications that the latter could be as well, although more research is needed to explore this. People were in fact more likely to vote for a recognizable name and face than an unknown candidate, and this was true regardless of the substance level of the political platform presented. A main effect for substance indicates that people did value specific information about a candidate’s positions, but celebrity status had influence independently of this, suggesting peripheral processing of the fame. Of course, the use of only one celebrity in the study limits the generalizability of the findings, so this study can only state that this true in the case of Dennis Quaid. However, as a hypothetical candidate, Quaid appears to have had little ‘baggage’ beyond his fame: he was rated as no more attractive or likeable than the non-celebrity, and did not appeal more to liberals, despite his connection to Hollywood. His age makes it unlikely that it was similarity or popularity (his likeability scores were close to neutral) with younger participants that increased intention to vote for him. Thus, while future research should certainly make use of multiple celebrities, the results found for this one should not be discounted. Although the higher intention to vote for a celebrity regardless of substance suggests peripheral processing, individual characteristics that would seemingly correspond to lower levels of motivation and ability did not emerge as significant, which was somewhat surprising. If peripheral processing were occurring, the ELM would predict that it would be most likely to occur for people who do not like to think extensively about decisions (low need for cognition) and who do not like to think about politics (low political involvement). Yet neither of these proved to be the case. One possible explanation for this is that fame is such an easy heuristic that it is used by even the politically astute and deep thinkers. There is really no way from the data here to discount this explanation, especially given that the validity of using political involvement and NfC to represent motivation and ability is not well established. Another possibility is that celebrity matters to more serious thinkers and bigger political wonks, but in a different way. These voters may be deliberating about what they know about the familiar candidate in order to decide for whom they will vote, which is why NfC and political involvement were not significant. To be clear, this study cannot prove this type of central processing is occurring,
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but the data do hint at the potential for low-information rationality (Popkin, 1994) among some participants. Either way, being influenced by celebrity status appears not to be unique to the mentally lazy or the politically ignorant. This finding suggests that it is important that more research in this area be conducted to answer the question of how celebrity status functions in motivated and capable people’s decision making, and to provide empirical evidence of low information rationality and an electorate that can inform themselves from things gleaned from the mass media. To do this, future studies should test the validity of using political involvement and NfC to represent motivation and ability, and if necessary, find other ways to establish central processing of fame. At the same time, the limited scope and external validity of this study should be addressed, for example by conducting research using multiple celebrities, and by varying the arena from which the celebrity comes (e.g., sports, movies), the length and valence of their fame before running for office, and their demographics. Only after such research will it be evident if there is a strategic take-away for political communication specialists spearheading celebrity campaigns. This is an important direction for future research in the current political environment, where young adults written off for so long as apathetic are becoming more involved in politics. In this study, age was a significant covariate, such that younger people were more likely to intend to vote for a candidate. This is not surprising in the case of the celebrity, given that young adults are notoriously interested in celebrities. But interaction effects involving voter age were not significant, meaning young voters were more likely to vote in general, a promising finding. Although in this study, older people were significantly more politically involved than younger, the multimedia information society in which young adults are comfortable means they are likely to have a store of knowledge
about political candidates and celebrities at their fingertips. Rather than assume they will do nothing more than use name recognition as a reason to check a box next to that name—although there is some reason to suggest some will do exactly that—it is exciting to think that extant knowledge will in some cases be used to make a more informed decision, and that the interactivity of these technologies may increase the influence of those decisions on others. In this case, political strategists are faced with the possibility that while political knowledge helps people pick appropriate candidates based on issues and positions relevant to them (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Meirick, 2005), the voter’s knowledge of the celebrity running for office may play a significant role in deliberation as well, and it may be a mistake to assume no information beyond the superficial is important. This study raises some intriguing questions, but can go no further that that. In addition to the suggestions made above, future studies can eliminate some of the ecological shortcomings of this one by testing extensive political campaign material rather than just one article; by using multiple media rather than just newspapers; and by exposing participants to both (or all) candidate options, not just one and then requiring them to make a voting decision without knowing who else was running for office. Completing a questionnaire about who one would vote for is not equivalent to normal voting behavior in which a voter must actively pursue the appropriate voting venue and show up at the specified date and time. There are many more variables that could be measured and controlled for, such as trustworthiness and expertise. Despite these limitations, the study makes clear that there can be some benefit to having a recognizable name, and concludes with a call for future research in how potential voters make sense of celebrity status.
Appendix A. Fictitious newspaper articles used as stimuli
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Celebrity candidate/substantive platform
Celebrity candidate/Non-substantive platform
Unknown candidate/substantive platform
Unknown candidate/non-substantive platform
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Lara Zwarun is an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri St Louis. Her research focuses on mass media effects and policy. Her work has appeared in journals including American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and Mass Communication and Society. Angela Torrey, M.A., is a Marketing Communication Manager at RPG Direct, providing public relations expertise for a leading pet care supplier. This research was conducted as part of the second author’s Master’s thesis, under the guidance of the first author.