What I don’t know (concretely) won’t hurt me. On the effects of vaguely formulated political statements

Communicating vague political statements is a common communication strategy adopted by political parties and politicians (e.g., Bull and Mayer, 1993; Harris, 1991; Maurer, 2009). Although there have been numerous theoretical studies on the advantages and disadvantages of such a communication strategy, so far, the real effects have hardly been analyzed empirically.
As part of a quantitative online experiment, we analyze whether and under what conditions the communication of a vague political statement positively or negatively influences the evaluation of the politician using it.
Our study builds on the theory of political ambiguity (e.g., Shepsle, 1972; Page, 1976) and on the theory of equivocation (Bavelas et al., 1990) as well as on existing empirical findings (e.g., Reinemann and Maurer, 2005; Rosen and Einhorn, 1972; Patton and Smith, 1980; Rudd, 1989).
Our experiment was conducted with a non-representative – however not mere student – sample of the German population (n=550). The setup was a one-way between-subject-design. As our independent variable, we used the formulation of a vague versus a concrete political statement. As moderating variables, we used the issue at hand (controversially discussed vs. ... mehrnon-controversial) and risk affinity.
Our analysis shows that vaguely formulated political statements do not per se influence recipients’ evaluations positively. Where recipients do evaluate a politician more positively is when he/she communicates a vaguely formulated statement on a controversially discussed issue. In the case of a non-controversial issue, the evaluation of the politician does not differ significantly between a vaguely formulated statement or a concrete political position. The recipient’s risk affinity does not have a moderating effect on the evaluation of the politician. Recipients with high or low levels of risk affinity do not differ in their evaluation of the politician who communicates vaguely.

References
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