Freddie J Jennings
Biographic Data
| ID | 292162 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Freddie J Jennings |
| GIVEN NAMES | Freddie J |
| FAMILY NAME | Jennings |
| SIGNATURE | JENNINGS F J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Arkansas at Fayetteville |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1536-9831 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 24 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Partisan Social Identity in the 2024 Presidential Election
The 2024 presidential campaign marked an unprecedented time in American politics. The race began with the sitting president, whose son was recently convicted of illegally purchasing a firearm, and a former president, who had been convicted on charges of falsifying business records. Though both legal situations could have been damning for their campaigns, many people felt that the convictions were politically motivated. More specifically, many par…
Fostering response efficacy
Issue and Image Learning in Debates
Scholars have studied the educational value of televised presidential debates for decades. The past three election cycles, with the addition of Donald Trump’s unconventional rhetorical style, these concerns have only magnified. We utilize the 2024 June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as well as the 2024 September debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to determine whether viewers update their perceptions of where the candidates’ …
The Depolarizing Effect of AI Chatbots
Political knowledge is essential to deliberative democracy, yet exposure to political information can polarize a citizen, which poses a threat to democracy. Considering this dilemma, the present study examines a method to inform the electorate that does not polarize them. Conversational artificial intelligence chatbots have this potential. Utilizing a pre-test/posttest experimental design, the differing influences of an AI interaction and exposur…
Partisan Cues, Anger, and Attitude Formation
How partisan social identity shapes evaluations of candidate brand elements on campaign websites
Political parties operate as partisan social groups and partisanship biases the way individuals process political information, form political opinions, and evaluate candidates. Partisans demonstrate favoritism when evaluating fellow party members but discriminate against those in the opposing party. However, the bounds of this partisan intergroup bias are undetermined. Using a constructed political website, an experiment tested the extent of the …
Intergroup Bias in Political Decision Making
Partisanship is a driving factor of vote choice; however, the mechanism of influence is nuanced. Political parties operate as social identities that motivate elaboration about a candidate and bias image perceptions. In other words, partisanship influences the way in which individuals process information and form political opinions. This influence stems from the processes of ingroup favoritism and outgroup denigration. The present study employs an…
Fostering learning among women
The gender political knowledge gap has proven to be persistent and pervasive. It extends across time, geography, and cultures. When it comes to national politics, women demonstrate lower political knowledge than men, and this has a detrimental effect on a deliberative democracy. The current study employed an elaborative and political socialization theoretical perspective in addressing the gender political knowledge gap. Through an experimental de…
Delineating Antecedents and Outcomes of Information Seeking Upon Exposure to an Environmental Video Opposing Single-Use Plastics
As environmental threats mount around the world, advocacy groups are exploring novel ways to reach the populace and spur them into action. The current study employs an experimental design with a control condition and a group that watched a pro-environmental video to test the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model. A short environmental advocacy video demonstrated the ability to engage viewers in combatting the problem of single-use …
Closing the Knowledge Gap
One mechanism by which citizens learn about candidates and issues is through watching presidential debates. Some scholars have raised concerns that these events, however, disproportionately benefit those already high in political knowledge more so than others with lesser knowledge levels. We hypothesize that knowledge begets knowledge because it prompts a constructive cognitive process that results from elaboration and reflection. We test this hy…
More Plastic than Fish
This study tests two overarching research questions: 1) Are Democrats more likely to share an environmental video on social media and, if so, why? 2) Does environmental information (e.g. a video on social media) expand or attenuate the partisan gap on environmental issues? Three methods of data collection (online survey, cognitive map drawing, and Dialsmith Perception Analyzer for moment-to-moment reactions) were used. We tested a model that inve…
Learning from Presidential Debates
Perhaps one of the most well-established findings stemming from decades of research exploring the effects of televised presidential debates is that exposure to this “information-rich” source of campaign communication enables viewers’ acquisition of issue knowledge. However, certain individuals will benefit more from the debate viewing experience because differences in individual characteristics allow some to learn more than others. In this quasi-…
‘I just don’t think she has a presidential look
Facebook and other social media are often utilized by political campaigns to communicate with the electorate and provide vital information about a candidate. However, in doing so, political campaigns and their audiences are open to unfavorable comments, including sexism and misogyny. The current experiment investigates the influence of sexist Facebook comments on candidate support in a hypothesized moderated mediation process. Through manipulatin…
Tweeting Along Partisan Lines
The influence of partisan identification infiltrates all aspects of a democracy. This study employs an innovative design to explore the presidential debate-viewing experience among young citizens. Data were collected from across the United States for all three 2016 presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump using pretest/posttest surveys and debate viewers' Twitter posts. Examining Twitter expression as a form of political elab…
Civility, credibility, and health information
As individuals turn to social media sites for health information, it is important to understand the factors that influence their perceptions of this information. This study employed an experiment to investigate the impact of social media discussion on perceptions of vaccines. Analysis, using structural equation modeling, revealed that source credibility and the civility of a discussion indirectly influence policy support requiring vaccinations, i…
Reconsidering partisanship as a constraint on the persuasive effects of debates
This study tests persuasive effects of 30 debate performances drawn from samples (n = 5780) of 22 states over four election cycles (2004–2016). We test partisanship of the candidate, type of debate (presidential or vice-presidential), gender of the candidate, whether it was the first debate of the cycle, and whether it was a town-hall debate as possible moderators. Results reveal that viewers are likely to perceive their inparty candidate more fa…
Comic Agonism in the 2016 Campaign
In this study, we assess the extent to which attending a candidate rally was associated with distrust of democratic institutions, epistemic rigidity, attribution of malevolent intentions to the political outgroup, and acceptance of political violence. Surveys ( N = 251) were distributed at rallies the night before and day of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Results suggest that attendees of rallies for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump were more likely to di…
A Multimedia Analysis of Persuasion in the 2016 Presidential Election
In this study, we test the indirect and conditional persuasive effects of a broadcast media echo chamber by combining political campaign attack ads with mockery and criticism on a late-night comedy program. A randomized experiment was conducted in which participants (N = 559) were assigned to view one of four reconstructed episodes of Late Night with Seth Meyers: (a) anti-Trump comedy with anti-Trump campaign ads, (b) anti-Trump comedy with nonpo…
Where to turn? The influence of information source on belief and behavior
When individuals face risks, they seek information to reduce uncertainty. This study examines where people turn for information and the effects this information seeking has on belief and behavior. Genetically, modified organisms pose a perceived environmental and health risk to society, creating worry and fear (negative affect) in many individuals. Though many people turn to personal sources, such as friends and family, for risk-relevant informat…
Tweeting Presidential Primary Debates
Researchers have noted that an individual's processing of political media messages occurs through various filters including partisanship, interest, and cynicism. The phenomenon of motivated processing, however, is understudied particularly in the context of televised presidential debates. As major campaign events, presidential debates have been linked to increases in viewers' political knowledge, political information efficacy, and changes in can…
Reconsidering partisanship as a constraint on the persuasive effects of debates
This study tests persuasive effects of 30 debate performances drawn from samples (n = 5780) of 22 states over four election cycles (2004–2016). We test partisanship of the candidate, type of debate (presidential or vice-presidential), gender of the candidate, whether it was the first debate of the cycle, and whether it was a town-hall debate as possible moderators. Results reveal that viewers are likely to perceive their inparty candidate more fa…
Tweeting Along Partisan Lines
The influence of partisan identification infiltrates all aspects of a democracy. This study employs an innovative design to explore the presidential debate-viewing experience among young citizens. Data were collected from across the United States for all three 2016 presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump using pretest/posttest surveys and debate viewers' Twitter posts. Examining Twitter expression as a form of political elab…
Comic Agonism in the 2016 Campaign
In this study, we assess the extent to which attending a candidate rally was associated with distrust of democratic institutions, epistemic rigidity, attribution of malevolent intentions to the political outgroup, and acceptance of political violence. Surveys ( N = 251) were distributed at rallies the night before and day of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Results suggest that attendees of rallies for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump were more likely to di…
Tweeting Presidential Primary Debates
Researchers have noted that an individual's processing of political media messages occurs through various filters including partisanship, interest, and cynicism. The phenomenon of motivated processing, however, is understudied particularly in the context of televised presidential debates. As major campaign events, presidential debates have been linked to increases in viewers' political knowledge, political information efficacy, and changes in can…
Partisan Cues, Anger, and Attitude Formation
A Multimedia Analysis of Persuasion in the 2016 Presidential Election
In this study, we test the indirect and conditional persuasive effects of a broadcast media echo chamber by combining political campaign attack ads with mockery and criticism on a late-night comedy program. A randomized experiment was conducted in which participants (N = 559) were assigned to view one of four reconstructed episodes of Late Night with Seth Meyers: (a) anti-Trump comedy with anti-Trump campaign ads, (b) anti-Trump comedy with nonpo…
Where to turn? The influence of information source on belief and behavior
When individuals face risks, they seek information to reduce uncertainty. This study examines where people turn for information and the effects this information seeking has on belief and behavior. Genetically, modified organisms pose a perceived environmental and health risk to society, creating worry and fear (negative affect) in many individuals. Though many people turn to personal sources, such as friends and family, for risk-relevant informat…
Tweeting Presidential Primary Debates
Researchers have noted that an individual's processing of political media messages occurs through various filters including partisanship, interest, and cynicism. The phenomenon of motivated processing, however, is understudied particularly in the context of televised presidential debates. As major campaign events, presidential debates have been linked to increases in viewers' political knowledge, political information efficacy, and changes in can…
A Multimedia Analysis of Persuasion in the 2016 Presidential Election
In this study, we test the indirect and conditional persuasive effects of a broadcast media echo chamber by combining political campaign attack ads with mockery and criticism on a late-night comedy program. A randomized experiment was conducted in which participants (N = 559) were assigned to view one of four reconstructed episodes of Late Night with Seth Meyers: (a) anti-Trump comedy with anti-Trump campaign ads, (b) anti-Trump comedy with nonpo…
Where to turn? The influence of information source on belief and behavior
When individuals face risks, they seek information to reduce uncertainty. This study examines where people turn for information and the effects this information seeking has on belief and behavior. Genetically, modified organisms pose a perceived environmental and health risk to society, creating worry and fear (negative affect) in many individuals. Though many people turn to personal sources, such as friends and family, for risk-relevant informat…
Civility, credibility, and health information
As individuals turn to social media sites for health information, it is important to understand the factors that influence their perceptions of this information. This study employed an experiment to investigate the impact of social media discussion on perceptions of vaccines. Analysis, using structural equation modeling, revealed that source credibility and the civility of a discussion indirectly influence policy support requiring vaccinations, i…
Reconsidering partisanship as a constraint on the persuasive effects of debates
This study tests persuasive effects of 30 debate performances drawn from samples (n = 5780) of 22 states over four election cycles (2004–2016). We test partisanship of the candidate, type of debate (presidential or vice-presidential), gender of the candidate, whether it was the first debate of the cycle, and whether it was a town-hall debate as possible moderators. Results reveal that viewers are likely to perceive their inparty candidate more fa…
Comic Agonism in the 2016 Campaign
In this study, we assess the extent to which attending a candidate rally was associated with distrust of democratic institutions, epistemic rigidity, attribution of malevolent intentions to the political outgroup, and acceptance of political violence. Surveys ( N = 251) were distributed at rallies the night before and day of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Results suggest that attendees of rallies for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump were more likely to di…
Learning from Presidential Debates
Perhaps one of the most well-established findings stemming from decades of research exploring the effects of televised presidential debates is that exposure to this “information-rich” source of campaign communication enables viewers’ acquisition of issue knowledge. However, certain individuals will benefit more from the debate viewing experience because differences in individual characteristics allow some to learn more than others. In this quasi-…
‘I just don’t think she has a presidential look
Facebook and other social media are often utilized by political campaigns to communicate with the electorate and provide vital information about a candidate. However, in doing so, political campaigns and their audiences are open to unfavorable comments, including sexism and misogyny. The current experiment investigates the influence of sexist Facebook comments on candidate support in a hypothesized moderated mediation process. Through manipulatin…
Tweeting Along Partisan Lines
The influence of partisan identification infiltrates all aspects of a democracy. This study employs an innovative design to explore the presidential debate-viewing experience among young citizens. Data were collected from across the United States for all three 2016 presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump using pretest/posttest surveys and debate viewers' Twitter posts. Examining Twitter expression as a form of political elab…
More Plastic than Fish
This study tests two overarching research questions: 1) Are Democrats more likely to share an environmental video on social media and, if so, why? 2) Does environmental information (e.g. a video on social media) expand or attenuate the partisan gap on environmental issues? Three methods of data collection (online survey, cognitive map drawing, and Dialsmith Perception Analyzer for moment-to-moment reactions) were used. We tested a model that inve…
Fostering learning among women
The gender political knowledge gap has proven to be persistent and pervasive. It extends across time, geography, and cultures. When it comes to national politics, women demonstrate lower political knowledge than men, and this has a detrimental effect on a deliberative democracy. The current study employed an elaborative and political socialization theoretical perspective in addressing the gender political knowledge gap. Through an experimental de…
Delineating Antecedents and Outcomes of Information Seeking Upon Exposure to an Environmental Video Opposing Single-Use Plastics
As environmental threats mount around the world, advocacy groups are exploring novel ways to reach the populace and spur them into action. The current study employs an experimental design with a control condition and a group that watched a pro-environmental video to test the risk information seeking and processing (RISP) model. A short environmental advocacy video demonstrated the ability to engage viewers in combatting the problem of single-use …
Closing the Knowledge Gap
One mechanism by which citizens learn about candidates and issues is through watching presidential debates. Some scholars have raised concerns that these events, however, disproportionately benefit those already high in political knowledge more so than others with lesser knowledge levels. We hypothesize that knowledge begets knowledge because it prompts a constructive cognitive process that results from elaboration and reflection. We test this hy…
Intergroup Bias in Political Decision Making
Partisanship is a driving factor of vote choice; however, the mechanism of influence is nuanced. Political parties operate as social identities that motivate elaboration about a candidate and bias image perceptions. In other words, partisanship influences the way in which individuals process information and form political opinions. This influence stems from the processes of ingroup favoritism and outgroup denigration. The present study employs an…
How partisan social identity shapes evaluations of candidate brand elements on campaign websites
Political parties operate as partisan social groups and partisanship biases the way individuals process political information, form political opinions, and evaluate candidates. Partisans demonstrate favoritism when evaluating fellow party members but discriminate against those in the opposing party. However, the bounds of this partisan intergroup bias are undetermined. Using a constructed political website, an experiment tested the extent of the …
The Depolarizing Effect of AI Chatbots
Political knowledge is essential to deliberative democracy, yet exposure to political information can polarize a citizen, which poses a threat to democracy. Considering this dilemma, the present study examines a method to inform the electorate that does not polarize them. Conversational artificial intelligence chatbots have this potential. Utilizing a pre-test/posttest experimental design, the differing influences of an AI interaction and exposur…
Partisan Cues, Anger, and Attitude Formation
Partisan Social Identity in the 2024 Presidential Election
The 2024 presidential campaign marked an unprecedented time in American politics. The race began with the sitting president, whose son was recently convicted of illegally purchasing a firearm, and a former president, who had been convicted on charges of falsifying business records. Though both legal situations could have been damning for their campaigns, many people felt that the convictions were politically motivated. More specifically, many par…
Fostering response efficacy
Issue and Image Learning in Debates
Scholars have studied the educational value of televised presidential debates for decades. The past three election cycles, with the addition of Donald Trump’s unconventional rhetorical style, these concerns have only magnified. We utilize the 2024 June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump as well as the 2024 September debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump to determine whether viewers update their perceptions of where the candidates’ …
Psychology (16 works) · Social Psychology (16 works) · Political science (15 works) · Politics (14 works) · Social Media and Politics (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Presidential system (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (7 works) · Perception (7 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (7 works)