Article | Open Access
Why Do You Feel That Way? Elaboration Questions and Feeling Heard in Political Talk
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Abstract: Across two studies, the current work sought to understand the impact of elaboration questions in political discussion on perceptions of feeling heard and future discussion intentions. Participants were presented with a recorded video of a political conversation where we manipulated the presence and absence of elaboration questions in political conversations surrounding homelessness (Study 1) and abortion (Study 2). Results indicate the presence of elaboration questions increased perceptions of being heard and intentions to engage in discussion in the future. We also found significant indirect results where the relationship between elaboration questions and intentions to engage in future discussions was mediated by feeling heard. These findings were never moderated by whether participants agreed with the political stance taken in the conversation.
Keywords: deliberative democracy; elaboration questions; feeling heard; political deliberation; political discussion
Published:
Issue:
Vol 13 (2025): When All Speak but Few Listen: Asymmetries in Political Conversation (In Progress)
© Brittany Shaughnessy, Myiah Hutchens, Janet Coats, Ilyssa Mann, Caleb Wiegandt, Mónica Guzmán. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.