Causal Effects of Discursive Trigger Points on Political Opinion: A Factorial Survey Experiment and Validation of a New Measure of Moral Expectations toward Society

"Trigger Points, Consensus, and Conflict" has established a novel research agenda by arguing that media-driven discursive triggers shape political opinion through four latent moral expectations toward society—Normality, Autonomy, Equality, and Control—and thereby activate conflict along the axes of top–bottom, us–them, inside–outside, and today–tomorrow (Mau et al., 2026; Westheuser et al., 2026). Despite its considerable influence, the framework has not yet been subjected to quantitative empirical testing. In particular, it remains unclear whether different trigger types causally affect political opinion, whether they selectively activate specific opinion axes, and whether the proposed moral expectations can be operationalized as distinct latent dimensions. To address these gaps, the present study combines a factorial survey experiment with the development and validation of a new multidimensional measurement instrument for moral expectations toward society.