Effects of emotional and utilitarian appeals on attitude change towards forced rehabilitation for drug abuse

Abstract

A well-established literature in the field of political psychology has studied the determinants of support for Human Rights. To contribute to the literature focused on support for rights, I study the effects of emotional and utilitarian appeals on attitude change towards Forced Rehabilitation (FR) for drug abuse through a survey experiment. In this paper, I argue that it is possible to modify the attitudes towards FR by appealing to the public’s emotions (d = 0.28 for hypothesis H1) and utilitarian values (d = 0.23 for hypothesis H2). By changing citizen’s attitudes towards FR, people who use drugs might benefit from 1) obtaining a lower probability of being forced into rehabilitation by family members or judiciary authorities and 2) less resistance from the public to the promotion and implementation of non-coercive drug treatment policies.