You Must Like Me for Me. New Experimental Evidence on the Interplay Between Musical Preferences and Ideological Attitudes

Ideological cues can shape pop culture preferences – for instance, being told that a given artist is a liberal should normally increase likeability towards them among liberals. In light of the increasing political advocacy role of entertainers across the globe, it is however surprising that little evidence exists about the reverse mechanism – that is, that learning about the political leaning of an artist that we appreciate affects our own political leaning. This research note presents novel experimental evidence suggesting that such mechanism might also be at play. We leverage the results of a novel experimental study conducted on a sample of American respondents in February 2024 (N = 1,821) in which we manipulated cues about the political leaning of two major pop stars, Taylor Swift and Kanye West, and assessed whether the saliency of such cues shapes musical and political preferences. Results provide preliminary support to the idea that political cues can affect musical preferences, which is not surprising – but also that musical cues can in turn, under certain circumstances, affect political preferences and attitudes.