Political parties increasingly rely on sympathisers becoming activists – spreading messages, donating money, and volunteering time. However, activism is inherently costly in time and money to the individual, leading modern parties to an important question: how can parties turn sympathy into action? Francisco (Paco) Tomas-Valiente is a PhD student studying how parties use moral rhetoric to electorally compete against the far right, and he joined us at our recent Academic Series to discuss his research which explores how moral language can be a powerful tool for mobilising sympathisers into real action.
Most existing research points to two broad types of motivation to action. The first is instrumental: people act because they want to help their party win, influence policy, or advance their own career. The second is non-instrumental: activism expresses partisan identity, strengthens belonging, or aligns someone with a valued social group. However, these explanations miss a key motivation reported by many activists, which is that they campaign because they feel morally compelled by the party’s cause.
At last week’s Academic Series, Paco went through his recent field experiment in Austria which aimed to demonstrate the effect of morally-coded messages. In partnership with an Austrian political party, their regular newsletter recipients (a group of already sympathetic, but not necessarily active, supporters) were split into three groups: one to receive moral messaging, one non-moral messaging, and a control group. The two non-control groups received emails additional to the regular newsletter content: these additional emails defended identical party policies, praised the party and criticized opposing parties. The moral emails emphasised the ethical principles behind the policies, attacked their opponents on moral grounds, and appealed to ethical values through terms like , “equality of opportunities”, “fairness”, or “justice”. The non-moral messages used pragmatic arguments, arguing that the party had “effective”, “solution-oriented” policies, and that their opponents used “empty rhetoric” rather than efficiently and competently solving genuine problems. One week after the experiment, Paco measured whether participants had engaged in any kind of activism, defined as whether or not they had donated, became a party member, or signed up to become active within the party.
The experiment took place outside of election time, so baseline activism was expectedly very low, with only 0.05% of the control group engaging in any kind of activism. In the week after the experiment, the group who received the moral messages went on to be significantly more active than both the control, becoming 3x more likely than the control group to go on to engage in any kind of activism, primarily through donations. The non-moral messaging group, on the other hand, didn’t become significantly more active than the control, and moral messages were 2x more effective than non-moral messages. In addition, these results appeared to persist one month after treatment, with the moral group becoming up to 4x more active than the control a month after the experiment.
In terms of who the experiment mobilised, it was primarily previously active members: neither of the messages had an observable effect on individuals who had never donated before. These results are also likely a lower-bound estimate: the intervention took place outside election season, when activism is typically minimal, and the sample of newsletter subscribers included many non-members. It proves to be a useful lesson for organisers that ethical arguments trump pragmatic ones when it comes to mobilising their existing base. Still,it might not be a sufficient tool to persuade those who are disengaged or opposed.
A rich vein of research remains on which kinds of moral messages are most effective, and for whom. Some previous research has been done to indicate left- and right-wing voters prefer different kinds of moral framing, and it is important to ensure when using moral language that the arguments you use align with your audience’s moral framework. Further experiments are needed on this point, and Paco welcomes collaborations with UK partners on this point.
Altogether, the lesson is clear: if you want to mobilise existing supporters, practitioners need not shy away from moral framing; ethical language does not automatically alienate people, and in fact a moral mandate is a powerful tool to mobilise those who already align with you. When used deliberately and directed at the base, it can greatly increase engagement with little cost to the party, even outside of election season, when activity is low even amongst activists.
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