A few years ago, I began exploring the idea of grammatical framing. In an article with Caitlin Fausey, "Can Grammar Win Elections?" published in Political Psychology, we explored the consequences of tweaking grammatical information in political messages. We discovered that altering nothing more than grammatical aspect in a message about a political candidate could affect impressions of that candidate’s past actions, and ultimately influence attitudes about whether he would be re-elected.

Participants in our study read a passage about a fictitious politician named Mark Johnson.