Framing effects explain a psychological mechanism of people influenced by communication sources that define and construct social or political issues and, in turn, affect public opinion at the aggregate level (Nelson et al., 1997). This study aimed to expand framing effects in the context of welfare policies while focusing on endogenous factors which affect cognitive evaluation, triggering the shaping of one’s attitudes. While taking account of anger and predisposition as the significant predictors for the framing effect, the current study focused on testing stingy frames: the freeloader frame and the budget deficit frame. The results indicated some significant interaction effects, with anger, predisposition, and frames explaining one’s decision to vote on welfare programs. In general, this study found that frames did not affect voter intentions on welfare policies; however, predisposition and anger respectively interacted with the frames. Specifically, as people maintained their pre-stances, anger, in particular, provoked strong opponents to intensify their stance against welfare policies, whereas other groups simply maintained their pre-stance. Moreover, in receiving the budget deficit frame, anger led participants to push their attitudes to the extreme end. In terms of three-way interaction, when anger was induced, the weakly opposed group tended to disapprove of welfare policies when receiving the freeloader frame. Additionally, when anger was induced in receiving the budget deficit frame, the strongly opposed group was less likely to support welfare policies. Despite minimal framing effects, these findings suggest a possibility that frames influence attitudes when interacting with anger and predisposition.
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