Dangerous Frames

How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion

Nicholas J. G. Winter

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9780226902371, 9780226902364
• eBook ISBN: 9780226902388
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Social Sciences

In addition to their obvious roles in American politics, race and gender also work in hidden ways to profoundly influence the way we think—and vote—about a vast array of issues that don't seem related to either category. As Nicholas Winter reveals in Dangerous Frames, politicians and leaders often frame these seemingly unrelated issues in ways that prime audiences to respond not to the policy at hand but instead to the way its presentation resonates with their deeply held beliefs about race and gender. Winter shows, for example, how official rhetoric about welfare and Social Security has tapped into white Americans' racial biases to shape their opinions on both issues for the past two decades. Similarly, the way politicians presented health care reform in the 1990s divided Americans along the lines of their attitudes toward gender. Combining cognitive and political psychology with innovative empirical research, Dangerous Frames ultimatelyilluminates the emotional underpinnings of American politics. 

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Race, Gender, and Political Cognition
• 2 Political Rhetoric Meets Political Psychology: The Process of Group Implication
• 3 American Race and Gender Schemas
• 4 Group Implication in the Laboratory
• 5 Racialization of Welfare and Social Security
• 6 Gendering of Health Care Reform
• 7 Race and Gender Frames in American Politics
• Appendix 1: Text of Experimental Articles
• Appendix 2: Experimental Question Wording
• Appendix 3: Measurement of Race and Gender Predispositions
• Appendix 4: Race Is Race; Gender Is Gender
• Appendix 5: Coeffcients for Additional Opinion Models
• Notes
• References
• Index