Attitude Change in Competitive Framing Environments? Open /Closed Mindedness, Framing Effects, and Climate Change
Framing scholarship on policy issues has primarily focused on how competitive message environments alter framing effects or how individual differences moderate the impact of frames. This study combines both of these focal areas by examining how individual open/closed mindedness moderates framing effects about climate change within competitive and noncompetitive framing contexts. Contrary to previous scholarship, our experimental study finds effects on attitudes in the competitive framing condition, but not the noncompetitive framing condition. The framing effects found in the competitive condition were contingent upon individual differences in open /closed mindedness. Analysis shows that individual open /closed mindedness influences framing effects in part by altering the effects of frame exposure on the perceived costs and benefits of government climate policies. doi:10.1111/jcom.12040 Over the last 20years, a significant amount of scholarship within the field of communication has investigated the influence of framed messages on audience attitudes and behaviors. However, an emerging critique of much of this research questions its external validity, as experimental participants are typically exposed to single sided messages that do not realistically model the competitive message environmentsinwhichmostindividualsareembedded.Thereiscurrentlyadearthof research examining how framing effects may operate differently within competitive message environments compared to noncompetitive environments. Furthermore, to date, scant research has examined how individual differences may influence message processing within competitive framing environments. This study aims to address these gaps in the framing literature by examining how framingmayinfluencesupportforclimatemitigationpoliciesinbothcompetitiveand noncompetitive message environments. Furthermore, we evaluate how individual