| P · prime | a racially coded phrase ('inner city') embedded in a survey question |
| T · target | support for punitive crime policy (prison spending vs antipoverty programs) |
| B · baseline | the neutral wording ('violent criminals' without 'inner city') |
| E · priming effect | racial attitudes exert much greater influence on policy preferences |
| A · association | 'inner city' activates racial stereotypes; note the authors frame the effect within issue-framing, placing it at the priming/framing boundary |
phenomenon · claim-type · cross-domain-transfer · mechanism · claim-relation · replication-status · limitation — grounded in the full text| phenomenon | racial code-word framing of crime policy opinion— “What follows is a systematic analysis of the impact of a phrase believed by many to carry strong racial connotations: "inner city."” | |
| claim-type | mechanism— “Consistent with our expectation (H,), when whites are asked about locking up violent inner-city criminals, their policy preferences are based much more strongly on their racial attitudes.” | |
| method — evidence | — “We do so by embedding an experiment in a national survey of whites, where a random half of respondents was asked whether they support spending money for prisons (versus antipoverty programs) to lock up "violent criminals," while the other half was asked about "violent inner city criminals."” | |
| builds-on | Nelson and Kinder (1996), group-centric issue framing— “Most generally, they are fully consistent with, and add to, the literature on issue framing-particularly the literature focusing on the group-centric nature of a frame (Nelson and Kinder 1996).” | claim_relations[0] |
| extends | Mendelberg (2001), implicit/explicit racial appeals and the Willie Horton ad— “Put differently, it may have helped transform what Mendelberg terms an "implicit" appeal into a more explicit appeal that would, doubtless, be recognized for its blatant racial component today.” | claim_relations[1] |
| builds-on | Druckman (2001), limits of elite framing— “Thus, while our findings provide ample evidence of the power of racial coding to affect citizens' judgments, they are also consistent with recent studies that demonstrate that there are limits to the ability of elites to use frames to manipulate mass opinion (Druckman 2001).” | claim_relations[2] |
| sense | THE EFFECT IS NOT A SHIFT IN THE ANSWER - IT IS A CHANGE IN WHAT PREDICTS IT. `whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded, `inner city` question.` The outcome here is a REGRESSION COEFFICIENT, not a mean or a latency: the same people, the same policy question, and a different thing driving their answer depending on two words. A corpus that stores `prime -> outcome, direction: increases` cannot express this at all - the direction is not up or down, it is `your prior attitudes now matter more to what you say`— “Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded” | senses[0] |
| sense | THE SMALLEST PRIME IN THIS CORPUS, AND THE AUTHORS SAY SO DELIBERATELY: `We have carried implicitness to its extreme: we have used no visuals, no mention of race, and no mention of characteristics often associated with race (like `welfare queens`).` Two words inserted into one survey item. Every other prime in this corpus is a word list, an image, a scent, a room, a sentence structure or a period of noise; this is a modifier. And the minimalism is the argument - the paper's point is that after the Willie Horton ad made blatant appeals costly, what remains available is this small— “We have carried implicitness to its extreme: we have used no visuals, no mention of race, and no mention of characteristics often associated with race” | senses[1] |
| sense | THE CAUSAL CLAIM IS EXACT BECAUSE THE DESIGN IS THAT SIMPLE: `Because of the very simple experimental design employed, in which differences between the inner-city and the baseline group can only be attributed to the introduction of the code word, it seems clear that respondents who think about criminals from the inner city have been encouraged to evaluate anticrime policies on the basis of the group that they associate with inner cities.` The inference chain is stated in full and each link is separable - the two words differ, therefore the difference is theirs, therefore the group was brought to mind, therefore the policy was judged by the group. `It seems clear` marks where the demonstration ends and the interpretation begins— “Because of the very simple experimental design employed, in which differences between the inner-city and the baseline group can only be attributed to the introduction of the code word, it seems clear that respondents who think about criminals from the inner city have been encouraged to evaluate anticrime policies on the basis of the group… | senses[2] |
| sense | IMPLICIT BEATS EXPLICIT, AND THAT IS AN EMPIRICAL CLAIM ABOUT PERSUASION RATHER THAN ABOUT COGNITION: a blatant message `would, today, be either unproductive or counterproductive because, as a number of studies suggest, implicit appeals are much more effective.` Most of this corpus treats implicitness as a methodological device for isolating automatic processing. Here it is a STRATEGIC property with a history: the Willie Horton ad made the explicit version expensive, so the implicit one is what survives— “Most likely, such a message would, today, be either unproductive or counterproductive because, as a number of studies suggest, implicit appeals are much more effective” | senses[3] |
| control | the experiment administered at random to half of the white sample, 290 respondents — held — rules out self-selection into the experimental condition, and any difference between the people who saw the framing manipulation and those who did not— “To conserve space on the survey, the experiment described below was randomly administered to half of the white sample (N = 290).” | controls[0] |
| audit | issue framing —causes→ racial attitudes — Audit 2026-09-28: DOUBTFUL - read against its full span and kept, but racial attitudes mattered more under racially coded frames; causes from 'issue framing' is loose.— “Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded” | concept_edges[0] |
| note | issue framing —causes→ racial attitudes — NO effect direction, AND THIS IS THE CLEAREST CASE YET FOR WHY THAT AXIS DOES NOT FIT EVERY EDGE. The code word does not increase or reduce racial attitudes - it increases how much they PREDICT the policy answer. The vocabulary has no term for 'raises the weight of', and 'increases' would be read as 'makes people more prejudiced', which is not what was measured and would be a serious misreading of a paper about race. Weight 0.9: the design supports the causal claim, and the quantity it acts on needs the note.— “Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded” | concept_edges[0] |
| weight | issue framing —causes→ racial attitudes — 0.9— “Consistent with the literature on issue framing, we find that whites' racial attitudes (for example, racial stereotypes) were much more important in shaping preferences for punitive policies when they receive the racially coded” | concept_edges[0] |
| outcome (stated by the tagger, no quotation) | control — held | controls[0] |
| replication | untested | |
| limitation | The authors do not claim their frame is the subtlest possible racial cue; many respondents openly equate the inner city with black Americans.— “We cannot, of course, claim that the inner-city frame is the most subtle of all possible racial frames, as evidenced by our finding (see footnote 4) that many clearly equate the inner city with blacks.” | limitations[0] |
| limitation | The design tests policy preferences only; extension to candidate preferences is asserted but untested.— “While our research has focused on policy preferences, we see no reason why we would not obtain the same results if we focused on candidate preferences-a… | limitations[1] |
| limitation | The analysis is restricted to white respondents; the African-American subsample was dropped for lack of variance on the outcome. | limitations[2] |
finding · quantity · variable · definition · key-term — grounded in the full text| finding | racial attitudes shaped punitive-policy preferences much more when the coded 'inner city' cue was present Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[0] |
| finding | a single coded phrase ('inner city') can carry strong racial connotations Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[1] |
| finding | the authors situate the effect within the issue-framing literature Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.findings[2] |
| variable | support for punitive crime policy (dependent variable) Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | content_tags.variables[1] |
| key-terms | racial priming, racialized code words, inner city, issue framing, racial stereotypes, punitive crime policy |
| concept | issue framing Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[2] |
| concept | racial stereotypes Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[3] |
| concept | code words — not defined in this paper's own words; THE PRIME, and it is two words inside a survey question - 'violent inner city criminals' against 'violent criminals'. No image, no mention of race, nothing a respondent could report as racial content Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[4] |
| concept | racial attitudes — not defined in this paper's own words; what the code word makes RELEVANT. The paper's effect is not on the policy answer but on how strongly this predicts it - the same people, the same question, a different thing driving the response Quotation withheld — this paper is not ours to reproduce, and the page has already quoted as much of it as the rights layer allows. The tag, its field and its confidence stand; the sentence is at the publisher. | concepts[5] |
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