Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle? Experimental Evidence That Racial Resentment and Political Ideology Condition Responses to Racially Encoded Messages

Wetts, Willer · Socius · 2019 · political-sociology · 10.1177/2378023119866268 · record Wetts2019-who-is-called-by-the-dog-whistle-experimenta
tag layer · index · concepts · authors · עברית

Where this record's text came from. faceted 2026-08 by reading the locally held text (pdftext); every evidence string verified as an exact substring of that text before merging. Replication status coded contested on the paper's own framing of the literature: "Though widely cited in academic and popular discourse, prior work finds conflicting evidence for this “dogwhistle hypothesis.”" The key ideology-moderation finding was unplanned in Study 1 and re-observed in Study 2 with a different issue, which the paper treats as an internal robustness check rather than external replication. The paper also contains a null result (no significant implicit-versus-explicit difference); claim type records the primary positive mechanism claim. 2026-08-17 and 2026-08-25 schema-0.3 passes: every quote verified as an exact substring of the staged text and anchored at merge time; concept terms verified present; every edge endpoint an existing node.

How to read this page. The article itself is not reproduced here — this paper is not cleared for redistribution, so what follows is the tag layer alone. The evidence sentences are withheld with the article. The table at the foot lists every tag the record carries; each row names the facet it belongs to, and the whose words column says whether the tag records the paper's own wording or the tagger's sentence about the paper. Every tag links to each other paper in the corpus carrying it. The machine-readable edition of the same thing is the TEI file beside this one, where the tags live in standOff, and the article is at its publisher via the link below. When we have changed our mind. Some entries in the table begin with a word in capitals and the reason for it. EVIDENCE CORRECTED — the finding still stands, but we had quoted the wrong sentence from the paper, and the quotation has been replaced with the right one. RETRACTED — the entry itself was wrong; it stays on the page, marked, with the reason, rather than being deleted. WITHDRAWN AND REPLACED — the entry was wrong, and a corrected version of it appears in the entries below. Each mark carries its own reason, in brackets, because the reasons differ from one entry to the next. An entry we have WITHDRAWN is removed from this page and kept in the record, with its reason. A line reading Audit and a date is a later re-reading of the entry against its whole sentence: DOUBTFUL means it was kept, and the reason says what is loose about it. Quotation marks inside the tagger's sentence. Where a tag is the tagger's own sentence, a phrase in quotation marks inside it is borrowed from the paper — the tagger's wording around it is not. The paper's own sentence is the evidence quote for that row; on this page it is withheld with the article, and the article is at its publisher. Nothing inside quotation marks anywhere on this page is ours: if it is quoted, it is the paper's. Whose words a concept carries. A concept entry records a term the paper itself uses, so the term, the sense given for it, and its evidence are the paper's own words, quoted where the paper fixes them. This is the opposite of a sense entry in the tag table, which is the tagger's sentence about how the paper uses a term. Where a concept entry could not be grounded in the paper's words, the entry says so on its own row.

Other fields define these differently the same word, defined another way in another discipline
logistic regression 3 fields · standard deviation 3 fields · bootstrap 2 fields · confidence interval 2 fields

Tags on this paper

Every tag the record carries, each linking to every other paper in the corpus that carries it. A tag appears here whether or not its words occur in the article — the spans below are only the ones a sentence in this paper licenses. Of the 6 concept tags on this paper, all 6 are grounded in a quoted sentence. All carry the tagger's gloss of what the term means in this paper, which is not something the article can license.

dog-whistle hypothesis racial priming theory racial resentment implicit explicit liberals Subtly cued racial stereotypes lower perceived deservingness of welfare recipients, and that reduced deservingness in turn reduces support for welfare spending. Colorblind norms in liberal political culture suppress discussion of black Americans' outcomes, so liberals lack ready structural explanations and cannot rebut appeals that tie those outcomes to racial stereotypes. Repeated exposure to racialized welfare rhetoric builds chronic race-policy associations among moderates and conservatives, leaving no room for a novel appeal to strengthen the link further. THE PAPER FLAGS ITS OWN CENTRAL FINDING AS UNPREDICTED, IN THE ABSTRACT, AND SUPPLIES THE GROUND FOR BELIEVING IT ANYWAY IN THE SAME SENTENCE: THAT DOG-WHISTLE EFFECTS WOULD BE CONCENTRATED AMONG LIBERALS WAS NOT PREDICTED IN ADVANCE, but this finding appears across two experiments testing effects of racial appeals in policy domains - welfare and gun control - THAT DIFFER IN THE EXTENT AND WAYS THEY HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY RACIALIZED. The replication is offered as the answer to the post-hoc objection, and the two domains are chosen for their difference rather than their similarity THE MODERATOR IS MEASURED TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE TREATMENT, which is what lets it be read as a disposition the message ACTS ON rather than an attitude the message produced: white Americans' racial attitudes were measured TWO WEEKS BEFORE they read political messages in which Quotation withheld at all AND THE CONTROL CONDITION IS REPORTED AS PARTLY FAILING ITS OWN THEORY: the same group OCCASIONALLY RESPONDED TO EXPLICIT RACIAL APPEALS EVEN THOUGH THESE APPEALS WERE RECOGNIZED AS RACIALLY INSENSITIVE. On the dog-whistle account an explicit appeal should be neutralised by the egalitarian norm the moment it is recognised, so a recognised appeal that still moves opinion is a result against the mechanism, reported by its own testers implicit racial appeal racial appeal welfare support support for gun control welfare recipient deservingness political knowledge explicit racial prejudice regression ordinary least squares (OLS) regression Cronbach's alpha bootstrap bootstrap analysis of mediation confidence interval logistic regression p-value mean standard deviation behavioural-experiment

Legend

relation to other work	`claim_relations`	how this paper stands to another: agrees, contradicts, extends, qualifies
claim type	`claim_type`	the shape of the claim: existence, mechanism, method, critique, prediction, null
concept edge	`concept_edges`	an asserted relation between two concepts, with the sentence asserting it
concept	`concepts`	an idea the paper works with, quoted where the paper uses it
content tag	`content_tags`	a finding, definition, quantity, statistic or variable named in the paper
control	`controls`	an experiment run to eliminate a rival explanation
limitation	`limitations`	what the paper says its evidence cannot support
mechanism	`mechanisms`	how the reported effect is said to come about
method	`method`	how the paper produced its evidence
phenomenon	`phenomenon`	the effect or regularity under study
sense	`senses`	a distinct use of a term, quoted where the paper fixes it

The paper

The full text is not reproduced here. This article is not cleared for redistribution, so the page carries the tag layer only. Its evidence sentences are withheld; the grounding status remains with each tag, and the article itself is at https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023119866268. The reading view exists for the papers whose licence permits it.

Every tag on this page

claim_relations 3 · claim_type 1 · concept_edges 2 · concepts 6 · content_tags 30 · controls 1 · limitations 4 · mechanisms 6 · method 1 · phenomenon 1 · senses 3

Relations on this page carry a quotation for the claim. Where a relation was separately evidenced — and so tested against the vocabulary for its type — the row says so; none of 2 relations here carry that mark. The rest are the tagger’s reading of the sentence quoted beside them.

facet	tag	field	conf.	whose words
claim_type	mechanism Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_type`		the paper's words
phenomenon	racial priming by implicit (dog-whistle) political appeals Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`phenomenon`		the paper's words
method	behavioural-experiment Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: behavioural-experiment	`method`		the paper's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Subtly cued racial stereotypes lower perceived deservingness of welfare recipients, and that reduced deservingness in turn reduces support for welfare spending.	`mechanisms[0]`		the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Colorblind norms in liberal political culture suppress discussion of black Americans' outcomes, so liberals lack ready structural explanations and cannot rebut appeals that tie those outcomes to racial stereotypes.	`mechanisms[1]`		the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Repeated exposure to racialized welfare rhetoric builds chronic race-policy associations among moderates and conservatives, leaving no room for a novel appeal to strengthen the link further.	`mechanisms[2]`		the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE PAPER FLAGS ITS OWN CENTRAL FINDING AS UNPREDICTED, IN THE ABSTRACT, AND SUPPLIES THE GROUND FOR BELIEVING IT ANYWAY IN THE SAME SENTENCE: THAT DOG-WHISTLE EFFECTS WOULD BE CONCENTRATED AMONG LIBERALS WAS NOT PREDICTED IN ADVANCE, but this finding appears across two experiments testing effects of racial appeals in policy domains - welfare and gun control - THAT DIFFER IN THE EXTENT AND WAYS THEY HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY RACIALIZED. The replication is offered as the answer to the post-hoc objection, and the two domains are chosen for their difference rather than their similarity	`mechanisms[3]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: THE MODERATOR IS MEASURED TWO WEEKS BEFORE THE TREATMENT, which is what lets it be read as a disposition the message ACTS ON rather than an attitude the message produced: white Americans' racial attitudes were measured TWO WEEKS BEFORE they read political messages in which Quotation withheld at all	`mechanisms[4]`	0.95	the tagger's words
mechanisms	mechanisms Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: AND THE CONTROL CONDITION IS REPORTED AS PARTLY FAILING ITS OWN THEORY: the same group OCCASIONALLY RESPONDED TO EXPLICIT RACIAL APPEALS EVEN THOUGH THESE APPEALS WERE RECOGNIZED AS RACIALLY INSENSITIVE. On the dog-whistle account an explicit appeal should be neutralised by the egalitarian norm the moment it is recognised, so a recognised appeal that still moves opinion is a result against the mechanism, reported by its own testers	`mechanisms[5]`	0.95	the tagger's words
limitations	Using real political rhetoric bought external validity at the cost of internal validity. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[0]`		the tagger's words
limitations	Stylistic differences remain between the implicit and explicit excerpts despite matching for length, theme and argument content. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[1]`		the tagger's words
limitations	MTurk samples are unsuited to describing the characteristics of the racially resentful liberal subgroup the results hinge on. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[2]`		the tagger's words
limitations	No data on participants' non-racial policy attitudes, so the concern that these 'liberals' may be ideologically mislabelled cannot be fully addressed. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`limitations[3]`		the tagger's words
controls	a control condition carrying a CONSERVATIVE ARGUMENT with no racial content Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. eliminates: that the response is to conservative political argument as such rather than to the racial appeal - the control matches the ideology and removes only the race · outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation): held	`controls[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
concepts	dog-whistle hypothesis Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: dog-whistle hypothesis	`concepts[0]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	racial priming theory Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: racial priming theory	`concepts[1]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	racial resentment Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: racial resentment	`concepts[2]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	implicit Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: implicit	`concepts[3]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	explicit Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: explicit	`concepts[4]`	0.95	the paper's words
concepts	liberals Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: liberals	`concepts[5]`	0.95	the paper's words
senses	the dog-whistle hypothesis / racial priming theory - ONE THEORY UNDER TWO NAMES, and this paper is where the corpus can see it, because the equivalence is stated rather than inferred: `the dog-whistle hypothesis, or racial priming theory`. The first name comes from political communication, the second from political psychology Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	implicit versus explicit, as this literature means it - not about the SUBJECT'S awareness of being influenced, as in the media-priming records, but about whether the MESSAGE names its racial content. The condition is a property of the stimulus, and the theory's prediction is that only the unnamed version can work Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[1]`	0.95	the tagger's words
senses	an unpredicted finding, marked as one BY THE AUTHORS IN THE ABSTRACT - and given, in the same sentence, the reason it should still be believed: it appears across two experiments in policy domains that differ in how far they have been racialized. A post-hoc result and its own robustness argument, stated together Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`senses[2]`	0.95	the tagger's words
claim_relations	contradicts → racial priming theory (the dog-whistle hypothesis as previously formulated) Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[0]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	extends → the dog-whistle hypothesis Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[1]`		the tagger's words
claim_relations	builds-on → Hutchings et al. (2010) Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`claim_relations[2]`		the tagger's words
concept_edges	dog-whistle hypothesis —same-as→ racial priming theory Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. strength of the relation: 0.95 · note: THE EQUIVALENCE IS STATED, NOT INFERRED - 'the dog-whistle hypothesis, OR racial priming theory' - which is rarer in this corpus than the two names are. Elsewhere tonight the corpus had to infer that two literatures were discussing one thing; here the authors say so in passing because they need both audiences. also in: dog-whistle hypothesis · racial priming theory	`concept_edges[0]`	0.95	the tagger's words
concept_edges	implicit —distinct-from→ explicit Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. differs in: WHETHER THE MESSAGE NAMES ITS RACIAL CONTENT - a property of the stimulus, not of the subject's awareness of being influenced. The theory predicts only the unnamed version can work · strength of the relation: 0.9 · note: Worth setting beside Hoewe2020, where 'implicit' is a property of the CONSUMER'S processing. Same word, different bearer. Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its span and kept, but implicit and explicit racial appeals; distinct-from is implied. also in: implicit · explicit	`concept_edges[1]`	0.95	the tagger's words
content_tags	regression Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: regression	`content_tags.statistics[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Cronbach's alpha Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: Cronbach's alpha	`content_tags.statistics[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	bootstrap Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: bootstrap	`content_tags.statistics[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	confidence interval Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: confidence interval	`content_tags.statistics[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	logistic regression Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: logistic regression	`content_tags.statistics[4]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	p-value Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: p-value	`content_tags.statistics[5]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	mean Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: mean	`content_tags.statistics[6]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	standard deviation Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: standard deviation	`content_tags.statistics[7]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	In Study 1, participants who read an implicit racial appeal opposing welfare reported significantly less support for welfare than those who read a message with no racial appeal. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	The welfare dog-whistle effect was concentrated among self-identified liberals high in racial resentment, who became less supportive of welfare after the implicit appeal. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	In Study 2, implicit racial appeals increased the effect of prior racial attitudes on gun-control support among liberals. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	In Study 2 the implicit appeal also harnessed explicit racial prejudice, making prejudiced liberals more supportive of gun control than in the control condition. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Implicit and explicit racial appeals did not differ significantly in how much they increased the impact of racial attitudes on policy views. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[4]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Among political moderates the implicit pro-gun-control appeal backfired, lowering gun-control support among the most racially prejudiced rather than raising it. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.findings[5]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	EVIDENCE CORRECTED (RE-GROUNDED - THE POINTER WAS WRONG, NOT THE CLAIM) · Racially resentful white liberals were particularly likely to have switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016. Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. EVIDENCE CORRECTED: RE-GROUNDED - THE POINTER WAS WRONG, NOT THE CLAIM. The old evidence was verbatim, anchored and correctly cut, and it contained NONE of this claim's numbers (2012, 2016). The paper states the claim in one sentence elsewhere and the tagger did not use it. the project, 2026-08-23: 'WE HAVE SPENT THE DAY VERIFYING THAT QUOTES ARE REAL AND NONE OF IT ASKS WHETHER THEY ARE RELEVANT.' Confirmed by reading the claim, the old span and the candidate together; the candidate carries every number AND the claim's own content words.	`content_tags.findings[6]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	dog-whistle hypothesis Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: dog-whistle hypothesis	`content_tags.definitions[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	implicit racial appeal Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: implicit racial appeal	`content_tags.definitions[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	racial appeal Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: racial appeal	`content_tags.variables[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	welfare support Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: welfare support	`content_tags.variables[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	support for gun control Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: support for gun control	`content_tags.variables[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	welfare recipient deservingness Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: welfare recipient deservingness	`content_tags.variables[5]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	political knowledge Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: political knowledge	`content_tags.variables[6]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	racial resentment Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: racial resentment	`content_tags.variables[7]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	explicit racial prejudice Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above. also in: explicit racial prejudice	`content_tags.variables[8]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	N = 1,797 — total white participants across the two survey experiments Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[0]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	865 — Study 1 participants retained for analysis after excluding 34 for implausible reading times Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[1]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	p = .04 — significance of the three-way liberalism x racial resentment x implicit appeal interaction on welfare support Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[2]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	Cronbach’s α = .92 — internal consistency of the eight-item racial resentment scale Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[3]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	3.1 percent — share of the US population that racially resentful white liberals constitute, roughly 10 million people Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[4]`		the tagger's words
content_tags	About 20 percent — share of white liberals in each sample and in 2016 ANES who count as high in racial resentment Quotation withheld — this record is not cleared for redistribution. The sentence is in the paper at the link above.	`content_tags.quantities[5]`		the tagger's words

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