Groups of self-identified white liberals could potentially be more influenced and swayed by President Donald Trump's racial rhetoric than conservative voters, according to a new study.

The research, which tested to see if racist dog-whistle political messages actually work, found that liberals could be the group most responsive to both the implicit and explicit racial appeals of Trump's campaign.

The research paper published earlier this month is entitled: 'Who Is Called by the Dog Whistle? Experimental Evidence That Racial Resentment and Political Ideology Condition Responses to Racially Encoded Messages'.

Rachel Wetts, of Brown University, and Robb Willer, of Stanford, carried out the study on 898 white Americans.

The research was motivated by whether political messages that have subtle racial stereotypes can sway white people's views on public policy.

The study, which tested to see if racist dog-whistle political messages actually work, found that liberals could be the group most responsive to both the implicit and explicit racial appeals of Donald Trump's campaign

The study used messages about welfare and gun control to test the theories.

'Many political commentators have suggested that Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 turned in part on traditionally Democratic white voters with whom Trump’s racial rhetoric resonated,' the researchers wrote.

'The current research lends credibility to this idea, suggesting that racially resentful liberals would be the group most responsive to the implicit - and sometimes explicit - racial appeals of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

'In line with this observation... data show that among whites, liberals high in racial resentment were particularly likely to switch from voting for Barack Obama in 2012 to voting for Donald Trump in 2016.'

Those who participated in the experiment were given a pretest two weeks earlier to measure their racial attitudes.

They were then presented with messages showcasing an implicit and explicit racial message opposing welfare programs to see how they would respond.

The study notes that welfare is an issue that is already strongly racially coded.

They found that liberals in high racial resentment were less supportive of welfare after being presented with the implicit racial appeal.

Separately, the group were given similar messages related to stricter gun control.

The experiment tested how they responded to messages linking black criminality to the prevalence of guns.

'The pattern of results suggests that racial appeals increase the impact of racial resentment on policy views but that this effect is driven by liberals,' the study found.

'Moderates and conservatives, on the other hand, had responses to racial appeals that varied across studies but that suggest these appeals either have little effect or can backfire for members of these groups.'

The messages used in the study included real phrases used by conservative politicians or groups, including Ronald Reagan, the American Freedom Party and Senator James Inhofe.

'These findings extend the dog-whistle hypothesis by demonstrating that ideology can condition whites’ responses to racial appeals. However, the current research has limitations that we hope future research will address,' the researchers noted.

'Here we used actual political rhetoric employed by conservative politicians or groups to increase the real-world relevance of our findings, but we acknowledge that we sacrificed some internal validity for external validity.

'Although we attempted to match the implicit and explicit appeals as closely as possible for length, racial themes employed, and content of the arguments, there are stylistic differences between the excerpts that are difficult to avoid in testing effects of naturally occurring racial appeals.'

The study included 898 participants, including 418 men and 480 women, who ranged in age from 19 to 88 years. Almost half of those who participated had at least a college degree.