Facts in Context: Problem Perceptions, Numerical Information, and Policy Attitudes

How does policy-relevant information change citizens’ policy attitudes? Though giving numerical information about social conditions has been found, at times, to change policy attitudes, why it works (or doesn’t) is poorly understood. I argue new or corrective information may not translate into policy-attitude change in part because it fails to instill a sense of need for change. Perceived problem seriousness, an affect-laden judgment about the acceptability of the status quo, may therefore be an important psychological mechanism through which information changes people’s minds. To perceive a problem, conditions must seem worse than they ought to be. Previous research, however, presents numerical information without a point of reference from which citizens can base their judgments. By contextualizing facts with reference points from the past (time) as well as other countries (space), four survey experiments show that numerical information about a range of social problems can change policy attitudes by first changing their perceived seriousness.