No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs
Abstract
We propose a model of motivated skepticism that helps explain when and why citizens are biased-information processors. Two experimental studies explore how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, finding strong evidence of a prior attitude effect such that attitudinally congruent arguments are evaluated as stronger than attitudinally incongruent arguments. When reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias. We also find a confirmation bias—the seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self-select the source of the arguments they read. Both the confirmation and disconfirmation biases lead to attitude polarization—the strengthening of t2 over t1 attitudes—especially among those with the strongest priors and highest levels of political sophistication. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings for rational behavior in a democracy.
... Given these findings of close connections and interwoven fabrics between emotions, personal experience, and "rational" faculties, we employ a theoretical framework that accommodates these modalities. Therefore, we look to the field of political psychology to situate this article within a framework of motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990;Taber & Lodge, 2006), or the idea that a person's goals or motivations-our emotional worldssubconsciously influence how we make sense of evidence, information, or arguments. This scholarship primarily emerges from political science and psychology and theorizes how bias shapes how people interact with evidence, judge its truthfulness, and learn from it. ...
... 480). As Taber and Lodge (2006) wrote, the thrust of the motivated reasoning literature is that "people are often unable to escape the pull of their prior attitudes and beliefs, which guide the processing of new information in predictable and sometimes insidious ways" (p. 767). ...
... That is, the biases that each person holds make us more likely to accept, integrate, and positively evaluate evidence that aligns with our preexisting views (commonly known as confirmation bias) while summarily discounting and negatively evaluating evidence that contradicts our preexisting views (disconfirmation bias). One result of this directional motivation is further attitude polarization, as congruent evidence-evidence with which we already agree and which feels good-is assimilated uncritically and incongruent evidence-evidence with which we already disagree and which feels bad-is counter-argued vigorously (Taber & Lodge, 2006), and opinions become more entrenched and more extreme. ...
... While some studies have previously argued that partisanship in Mexico is weak (Greene 2011), recent studies in Mexico (Castro Cornejo 2021) and across Latin America (Lupu 2015;Calvo and Ventura 2021;Haime and Cantú 2022) have found that, similar to old democracies, partisans are more informed and engaged than nonpartisans and that their partisan attachments moderate their attitudes and voting behavior. In that sense, this research argues that citizens in young democracies like Mexico also engage in partisanmotivated reasoning (Taber and Lodge 2006)-that is, the tendency to accept information with the goal of arriving at predetermined conclusions. Advancing the literature on motivated reasoning, this study seeks to understand which individual-level factors, in addition to partisanship, make voters more likely to engage in election denialism. ...
... Motivated reasoning theory argues that citizens are often determined to defend their prior beliefs and seek out and accept information consistent with them (Kunda 1990). In politics, voters are motivated to interpret information through a partisan lens (Bartels 2002;Zaller 1992), which makes them reject information that goes against their longstanding beliefs (Taber and Lodge 2006). While it is possible for voters to update their beliefs in a Bayesian way and carefully revise their opinions as they consume more information (Gerber and Green 1999), this research argues that voters are particularly likely to see political events through a partisan lens in polarized settings after highly contested elections (Bartels 2002). ...
... Regardless of the specific issue, these studies show that facts or events do not speak for themselves; people must still interpret them (Gaines et al. 2007;Castro Cornejo 2023a), leading voters to interpret those facts and their implications differently. When directional motivations are more salient (e.g., accusations of election fraud in a polarized party system like Mexico), respondents are likely to process information in a manner that is consistent with their partisan preference rather than maximizing accuracy (Flynn, Nyhan and Reifler 2017;Taber and Lodge 2006). Consistent with motivated reasoning theory, these voters do not judge the integrity of the election based on available evidence but choose partisan interpretations to explain the outcome of the election. ...
Why do some voters believe that there is electoral fraud when this belief contradicts the best available evidence? While the literature on public opinion has explored misperceptions’ pervasiveness and the factors that contribute to them in advanced industrial democracies, the present study analyzes motivated reasoning among voters in a young democracy, Mexico. This study highlights the important role that partisanship plays in voters’ likelihood to believe the allegations of electoral fraud in the 2006 presidential election in Mexico, which continues polarizing both political elites and the electorate even today. To understand the mechanisms at work, this research finds that it is not voters lacking information but rather voters with high levels of affective polarization and conspiratorial thinking who are more likely to believe that there was electoral fraud. The study also includes a survey experiment that fact-checked the belief in the alleged electoral fraud. Consistent with motivated reasoning theory, MORENA partisans resisted efforts to reduce their misperception. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the conditions that make some voters hold misperceptions in young democracies.
... From the psychological theory of directly motivated reasoning [16], we can hypothesize that mere exposure to information on an issue through the media is likely to lead to distributive opinion polarization. Directly motivated reasoning refers to the (unconscious) strategy of people to seek out information that reinforces their preferences (i.e., confirmation bias), denigrate attitudinal incongruent arguments (i.e., disconfirmation bias), and evaluate information supporting their prior attitudes as stronger and more compelling than counter attitudinal information (i.e., prior attitude effect) [17] (p. 757). ...
... 757). Directional motivational reasoning implies that processing additional information on an issue is likely to sharpen citizens´prior beliefs and attitudes on the particular issue, which in turn increases attitudinal polarization [17]. Empirical studies have indeed shown that directly motivated reasoning leads citizens to endorse stronger opinions (i.e., be more polarized) on an issue after having been exposed to new information on this issue. ...
... Empirical studies have indeed shown that directly motivated reasoning leads citizens to endorse stronger opinions (i.e., be more polarized) on an issue after having been exposed to new information on this issue. This effect appears in particular among those who have strong prior opinion on the respective issue and those who are more politically knowledgeable, as the former have affective links to the issue and the latter possess more ammunition to counter information disconfirming their prior beliefs [17,18]. ...
Various studies point to the lack of evidence of distributive opinion polarization in Europe. As most studies analyse the same item batteries from international social surveys, this lack of polarization might be due to an item’s issue (e.g., the nature or substance of an item) or item formulation characteristics used to measure polarization. Based on a unique sample of 817 political attitudinal items asked in 2022 by respondents of a non-random online panel in Germany, we empirically assess the item characteristics most likely to lead to distributive opinion polarization–measured with the Van der Eijk agreement index. Our results show that only 20% of the items in our sample have some–at most moderate–level of opinion polarization. Moreover, an item’s salience in the news media before the survey data collection, whether an item measures attitudes toward individual financial and non-financial costs, and the implicit level of knowledge required to answer an item (level of technicality) are significantly associated with higher opinion polarization. By contrast, items measuring a cultural issue (such as issues on gender, LGTBQI+, and ethnic minorities) and items with a high level of abstraction are significantly associated with a lower level of polarization. Our study highlights the importance of reflecting on the potential influence of an item’s issue and item formulation characteristics on the empirical assessment of distributive opinion polarization.
... Epävarmuuden vallitessa ihmiset saattavat takertua omiin ennakkokäsityksiinsä. Mediayleisöllä on taipumus pitää omia mielipiteitä tukevia näkökulmia kaikkein uskottavimpina (Peters 2000, 379;Carpenter 2015). Näin käy erityisesti politisoituneissa kysymyksissä (Taber ja Lodge 2006). ...
... Suuren yleisön silmissä vakuuttavimmalta ei välttämättä vaikuta se asiantuntija, jolla on parhaat tiedot ja tieteelliset argumentit, vaan retoriset taidot voivat painaa enemmän. Ihmiset myös luottavat helposti niihin asiantuntijoihin, joiden näkemykset tukevat heidän omia mielipiteitään (Peters 2000, 379;Carpenter 2015) etenkin silloin, kun kyse on politisoituneesta kysymyksestä (Taber ja Lodge 2006). Koronakeskusteluun osallistuneet tukahduttamisstrategian kannattajat, joiden tieteellinen tausta ei ollut epidemiologiassa, saattoivat onnistua vastaamaan sellaisiin emotionaalisiin tarpeisiin, joihin perinteiset kansanterveysasiantuntijat eivät kyenneet vastaamaan (Pearce 2022). ...
Vertailen Helsingin Sanomien (HS) ja ruotsalaisen Dagens Nyheterin (DN) tapaa käsitellä tieteellistä tietoa koronapandemian yhteydessä keväällä 2020. Kiinnostuksen kohteena ovat artikkelit, joissa esitettiin eriäviä näkökulmia tieteellisestä kysymyksestä. Keskeisiä tutkimuskysymyksiä ovat, mikä oli uutisoinnin suhde kansalliseen koronapolitiikkaan, mistä esitettiin eriäviä näkemyksiä ja kuinka tieteellisiä kiistoja käsiteltiin. Lehdet käsittelivät tieteellistä epävarmuutta eri tavoin. HS ratkoi epävarmuuksia antamalla äänen eri asiantuntijoille. Lehden pyrkimyksenä oli antaa monipuolinen kuva epävarmasta asiasta. Käsittely oli teknistä ja yksityiskohtiin menevää. DN avasi tieteellisiä tuloksia toimittajan äänellä ja pyrki helppotajuisuuteen. DN myös otti suoremmin kantaa siihen, mikä oli uskottavaa tiedettä. Usein uskottavuuden arvioijana toimi Folkhälsomyndighetenin Anders Tegnell, jonka asema DN:ssä oli paljon vahvempi kuin THL:n Mika Salmisen HS:ssa. Näin DN otti HS:a voimakkaammin ”kansanvalistajaroolin” uutisoinnissaan.
... Motivated reasoning can exacerbate polarization, as it undermines processing of information that contradicts existing beliefs 39 and cements negative views of outgroups 40 . Biased information processing can enhance polarization over various policies by making supporters and opponents of an issue ignore information that does not align with their beliefs 41 . Negative views of outgroups can increase animosity between partisans by, for example, justifying harmful behavior against political opponents 38,41,42 . ...
... Biased information processing can enhance polarization over various policies by making supporters and opponents of an issue ignore information that does not align with their beliefs 41 . Negative views of outgroups can increase animosity between partisans by, for example, justifying harmful behavior against political opponents 38,41,42 . In this work we explore how pre-existing beliefs shape polarization over a new issue. ...
This work explored polarization over Israel’s Judicial Reform, introduced in January 2023. We find that the reform divided people into pro- and anti-reform camps, which differed in characteristics such as institutional trust, patriotism, and national identity. For example, the camps disagreed about trust in the government versus the judiciary. In line with motivated reasoning—biased reasoning processes used to reach desired conclusions—people’s pre-existing characteristics motivated polarized views of the reform as a threat to democracy (issue-based polarization) and negative emotions towards opponents (affective polarization). Further demonstrating a motivated process, pro-reform participants (the electorate majority), prioritized majority rule over other democratic features (e.g., minority rights) compared to anti-reform participants. Polarization differentially predicted downstream consequences (e.g., protest methods), indicating that the camps’ reactions were motivated by the extremity of their views and negative emotions. This work extends the understanding of potentially motivated polarization processes and their immediate downstream consequences.
... Importantly, political sophistication does not mitigate affectively motivated reasoning, but only strengthens the reasoner's capacity to employ reason in the service of affect. Taber and Lodge (2006), for example, found that politically sophisticated individuals were more, not less likely than to evaluate arguments based on the extent to which they conformed to their own political beliefs, likely because they have more information at their disposal, making political concepts even more affectively charged and efficient for them to refute arguments that do not conform to their affective state. Similarly, Kahan (2013) found that effortful thinking actually strengthened motivated reasoning. ...
... Affectively polarized people engage in motivated reasoning as a form of "identity defense". They will disbelieve and resist empirical assertions (e.g., Liu and Ditto 2013;Taber and Lodge 2006) and even facts (Iyengar and Westwood 2015) that threaten the standing of the social identity and will be more inclined to believe social-identity-affirming misinformation (Garrett et al. 2019). Further, affective polarization leads people to be less likely to seek diverse perspectives (Valentino et al. 2008) in order to make compromises with one another (MacKuen et al. 2010) and to hold themselves to a standard of civility and tolerance (e.g., Layman et al. 2006). ...
A growing body of research suggests that the contemporary media environment enables motivated reasoning, which intensifies affective polarization. This is especially the case in the U.S., where elections are capital-intensive and media are largely commercially owned. From a normative perspective, these commercial forces may interfere with authentic communication by hijacking the “lifeworld” and thus undermining the sincerity of our speech. From a psychological and empirical perspective, this means we are an affective public steeping in “hot cognitions” that unconsciously motivate us toward processing (mis)information in biased and distorted ways. This kind of cognitive limitation intensifies as current affairs heat up, but starts well before, as a function of media market boundaries aligning with human psychology. Through a synthetic literature review of theory and empirical research, this essay argues that “social identity complexity” may help to overcome some of the worst outcomes of motivated reasoning, pointing toward a developmental basis for more authentic communication in the public sphere.
... We further anticipate those with higher objective numeracy will exhibit stronger framing effects compared to those low in objective numeracy. Despite the assumption that higher numeracy can help to inform better judgment and decision-making 25 , evidence demonstrates that knowledge can increase heuristic processing, leading more knowledgeable individuals to selectively view and interpret information that conforms with their predispositions, rather than that which is necessarily comprehensive or correct 26,27 . For example, Peters et al. 14 found that high numerates were more likely than low numerates to rate inferior bets as attractive, to express less negative and more clear feelings about their chance of winning, and to express more positive feelings about the amount won. ...
... While there is some evidence indicating those who engage in more deliberate thinking may be more likely to reach accurate conclusions 25 , other research suggests information processing remains subject to existing bias(es), especially when biases are sufficiently strong and more affectively-driven 26 . As such, while we might expect NFCog to attenuate framing effects among low numerates, who derive less value and affect from numerical information, we would expect NFCog to exacerbate framing effects among high numerates, who derive more value and affect from numerical information 14 . ...
While Prospect Theory helps to explain decision-making under risk, studies often base frames on hypothetical events and fail to acknowledge that many individuals lack the ability and motivation to engage in complex thinking. We use an original survey of US adults (N = 2813) to test Prospect Theory in the context of the May 2023 debt ceiling negotiations in the US Congress and assess whether objective numeracy moderates framing effects. We hypothesize and find evidence to suggest that most respondents are risk-averse to potential gains and risk-accepting to potential losses; however, high numerates are more risk-averse and risk-accepting to gains and losses, respectively, than low numerates. We also find that need for cognition interacts with numeracy to moderate framing effects for prospective losses, such that higher need for cognition attenuates risk-acceptance among low numerates and exacerbates risk-acceptance among high numerates. Our results are robust to a range of other covariates and in models accounting for the interaction between political knowledge and need for cognition, indicating joint moderating effects from two knowledge domains similarly conditioned by the desire to engage in effortful thinking. Our findings demonstrate that those who can understand and use objective information may remain subjectively persuaded by certain policy frames.
... We further anticipate those with higher objective numeracy will exhibit stronger framing effects compared to those low in objective numeracy. Despite the assumption that higher numeracy can help to inform better judgment and decision-making 25 , evidence demonstrates that knowledge can increase heuristic processing, leading more knowledgeable individuals to selectively view and interpret information that conforms with their predispositions, rather than that which is necessarily comprehensive or correct 26,27 . For example, Peters et al. 14 found that high numerates were more likely than low numerates to rate inferior bets as attractive, to express less negative and more clear feelings about their chance of winning, and to express more positive feelings about the amount won. ...
... While there is some evidence indicating those who engage in more deliberate thinking may be more likely to reach accurate conclusions 25 , other research suggests information processing remains subject to existing bias(es), especially when biases are sufficiently strong and more affectively-driven 26 . As such, while we might expect NFCog to attenuate framing effects among low numerates, who derive less value and affect from numerical information, we would expect NFCog to exacerbate framing effects among high numerates, who derive more value and affect from numerical information 14 . ...
While Prospect Theory helps to explain decision-making under risk, studies often base frames on hypothetical events and fail to acknowledge that many individuals lack the ability and motivation to engage in complex thinking. We use an original survey of US adults (N = 2813) to test Prospect Theory in the context of the May 2023 debt ceiling negotiations in the US Congress and assess whether objective numeracy moderates framing effects. We hypothesize and find evidence to suggest that most respondents are risk-averse to potential gains and risk-accepting to potential losses; however, high numerates are more risk-averse and risk-accepting to gains and losses, respectively, than low numerates. We also find that need for cognition interacts with numeracy to moderate framing effects for prospective losses, such that higher need for cognition attenuates risk-acceptance among low numerates and exacerbates risk-acceptance among high numerates. Our results are robust to a range of other covariates and in models accounting for the interaction between political knowledge and need for cognition, indicating joint moderating effects from two knowledge domains similarly conditioned by the desire to engage in effortful thinking. Our findings demonstrate that those who can understand and use objective information may remain subjectively persuaded by certain policy frames.
... News literacy holds promise in the fight against misinformation because it is malleable and can potentially respond to well-designed interventions. Other factors such as political ideology have emerged as an important predictor of misperceptions in health, science, and political domains, such as vaccination, climate change, gun control and the Iraq war and September 11 attack (Miller et al., 2016), perhaps due to the consistent and strong effects of political ideology on selective exposure (Stroud, 2011) and motivated reasoning (Taber & Lodge, 2006). However, it is extremely difficult, if not entirely impossible during a time of severe political polarization, to change one's political ideology once formed. ...
... In terms of individual trait differences, while there has been no established evidence to suggest that conservatives are less knowledgeable about news media than liberals, it is possible that stronger directional motivated reasoning among conservatives may attenuate or override the accuracy motivated reasoning required during the application of their knowledge. Outlining directional and accuracy motivations as the two basic forms of human reasoning, the theory of motivated reasoning (Taber & Lodge, 2006) suggests that while everyone generates automatic affective responses when encountering information, those driven by accuracy motivations tend to reflect on their opinion formation processes and recalculate their decisions, while those driven by directional motivations tend to go along with this affective reaction signaling their preexisting preference. Because successful application of news literacy involves reflection of the contexts and biases of news media and their consumers, when strong identity-based reasoning becomes the driving force, individuals are not motivated enough to apply news literacy to strive for accurate beliefs. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic heightened the urgency of working across lines of political difference to combat misinformation. This paper asks: Does having news literacy matter in reducing misperceptions, and importantly, for whom does having news literacy matter? Using a national survey of US adults (N = 1700) that included the largest set of COVID-19-related misperceptions examined to date (k = 84), we tested how the effects of news literacy on misperceptions vary across ideology and ideological media consumption. Although holding a higher level of news literacy is associated with fewer misperceptions in general, it helps conservatives less than it helps liberals. Moreover, although news literacy is associated with mitigating the misperception-inducing effect of ideological media consumption on both ends of the political spectrum, this potential benefit appears to be weaker for conservative media use than for liberal media use. Finally, the benefit of having news literacy is maximized among cross-cutting consumers of ideological media but dampened among like-minded consumers, particularly conservatives with heavy conservative media consumption. We discuss the implications of our findings for identifying subgroups for future news literacy interventions and understanding the potentials and challenges of using news literacy to combat misinformation in a polarized climate. ARTICLE HISTORY
... It has also been discussed that mutual validation among like-minded others gives rise to polarization (Slater, 2007). Finally, some authors have suggested that attitudinally congenial information is more likely to be believed (Taber and Lodge, 2006), less likely to be scrutinized (Edwards and Smith, 1996), and more likely to be shared (Johnson et al., 2020), even if the information is (known to be) false (Traberg and Van Der Linden, 2022). In sum, many problematic societal phenomena are explained by a congeniality narrative-the tendency to want more of the same. ...
... However, increased activity does not predict whether the response will be attitudinally selective. Extant studies have yielded mixed findings: while Taber and Lodge (2006) reported that high political knowledge increases the congeniality bias, no such relations were found in more recent studies (Jang, 2014). Therefore, we did not predict (but investigated) whether knowledge is moderating the uncongeniality bias, resulting in the following hypotheses. 1 H1. ...
Phenomena like echo chambers and societal polarization have often been linked to an individual preference for like-minded information (selective exposure). This view has been challenged recently: behavior on comment sections in online forums suggests the opposite dynamic, with users more likely to reply to attitudinally uncongenial content. Three experimental studies (total N = 1524) explore boundary conditions of this uncongeniality bias by measuring participants’ tendency to reply to comments on climate science. Studies 1 (student sample) and 2 (non-student sample) replicate the uncongeniality bias. However, Study 3 (representative for age and gender in Germany) yielded a surprising congeniality bias (a preference for replying to congenial comments) which was driven by participants with higher age. Further results across studies suggest that high confidence increases engagement (general likelihood to reply) but reduces antagonism (likelihood to reply to uncongenial content). Conversely, high knowledge reduces engagement but increases the uncongeniality bias.
... People rate belief consistent arguments to be higher quality (Ditto et al., 2019;Kahne & Bowyer, 2017;Kobayashi, 2010Kobayashi, , 2014McCrudden et al., 2017) and more sound (Wolfe & Kurby, 2017) than belief inconsistent arguments. Research shows that people with polarized attitudes evaluate attitude consistent information as high quality and convincing; the opposite is true for attitude inconsistent information (Lord et al., 1979;Taber & Lodge, 2006). These biases in argument evaluation are consistent with findings that people include more attitude or belief consistent versus inconsistent information when writing argumentative essays (Nussbaum & Kardash, 2005;. ...
... While infrequent, the evaluative statements were 90% positive after reading a belief consistent text and 74% negative following a belief inconsistent text. These results are generally consistent with previous research suggesting that people's evaluation of content is biased by their initial beliefs (Diakidoy et al., 2015;Ditto et al., 2019;Lord et al., 1979;Taber & Lodge, 2006). Subjects drew upon personal experiences, stories, and/or anecdotes and emotion in their essays, however these characteristics were not affected by text-belief consistency. ...
The content of argumentative essays is determined by multiple factors, but belief influences are understudied compared to topic knowledge and argument schema. We investigate how beliefs influence the inclusion of basic components in argumentative writing. A pre-screening survey identified believers and disbelievers in gun control effectiveness. In a subsequent laboratory session, subjects (N = 324) read a one-sided text that was either consistent or inconsistent with their beliefs. Subjects then reported their beliefs and wrote a 250-word argumentative essay explaining them. These essays were coded for the presence or absence of a claim, the number of reasons supporting the claim, the presence of a counterargument, text content, and other factors. 682 supplementary subjects provided approximately 10 ratings for each essay on several factors, including position, clarity, and consideration of both sides. Subjects who read a belief consistent text wrote essays that were more likely to contain a claim, more reasons, and text content. Subjects who read a belief inconsistent text were more likely to include an evaluative statement about the text and to consider both sides of the issue. Individual differences in belief change were related to the likelihood of stating a claim, the number of reasons, and likelihood of mentioning text content. Results suggest that beliefs influence the basic components of argumentation that are included in argumentative essays. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.
... First, infection may reduce opposition to COVID-19 policies by causing legislators to update their perceptions of the level of risk involved. Namely, legislators who downplayed the risks of the virus may do so because their reasoning is shaped by their partisan affiliation (Taber & Lodge, 2006), and they may not expect to face tangible personal repercussions from their policy positions on COVID-19. Once infected, legislators may find it more challenging to maintain the partisan illusion that COVID-19 does not pose a substantive threat to their own and others' well-being, and therefore may update their risk perceptions. ...
... These results support other research showing that political dynamics and elite cues from political leaders (amplified through the media) play a key role in shifting public opinion about climate change in the U.S (Mildenberger and Leiserowitz 2017; Merkley and Stecula 2018;Hornsey et al. 2022). People who identify with a specific political group tend to be strongly influenced by the leaders of that group due to motivated reasoning, as they are driven to conform their personal beliefs to align with the leaders' worldviews (Kunda 1990;Taber and Lodge 2006;Hart and Nisbet 2012;Druckman and McGrath 2019). ...
Building public consensus about the threat of climate change is critical for enacting meaningful action to address it. To understand how Americans are changing their beliefs about climate change, research typically relies on cross-sectional survey responses. Data that is collected from the same individuals over time– panel data– provides clearer evidence about whether people’s beliefs are shifting. In this article, we investigate changes in climate beliefs among the American public using panel data from 2,135 survey respondents, analyzing opinion changes through the “Global Warming’s Six Americas” framework– an audience segmentation tool that identifies the people who are the most worried about global warming (the Alarmed) to the least worried (the Dismissive). Our findings indicate that many Americans are changing their minds about climate change and becoming more worried over time, and that these shifts correlate with changes in support for climate policy and behavioral engagement. However, these trends vary within key segments of the population and indicate that while climate communication may be shifting the beliefs of many, strategies for reaching particular audiences may need to be adapted.
... The positive effects of a perceived close social distance can also be explained via the mechanism of motivated reasoning. Building on the approach of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), motivated reasoning describes how individuals process information in a way that allows them to fit new information into their existing sets of information (Taber & Lodge, 2006). Cognitive dissonance evolves if cognitions, e.g., existing knowledge, attitudes or beliefs, are in conflict with each other. ...
... Nonetheless, the balance of public conversations does not reflect this consensus. Instead, some users engage in performative discussions where science is used as a tool for motivated reasoning [80], eschewing the pursuit of epistemic truth [47]. ...
The COVID-19 pandemic brought about an extraordinary rate of scientific papers on the topic that were discussed among the general public, although often in biased or misinformed ways. In this paper, we present a mixed-methods analysis aimed at examining whether public discussions were commensurate with the scientific consensus on several COVID-19 issues. We estimate scientific consensus based on samples of abstracts from preprint servers and compare against the volume of public discussions on Twitter mentioning these papers. We find that anti-consensus posts and users, though overall less numerous than pro-consensus ones, are vastly over-represented on Twitter, thus producing a false consensus effect. This transpires with favorable papers being disproportionately amplified, along with an influx of new anti-consensus user sign-ups. Finally, our content analysis highlights that anti-consensus users misrepresent scientific findings or question scientists' integrity in their efforts to substantiate their claims.
... Surprisingly, this mechanism -we'll call it "Kahan's mechanism" -turns out to involve motivation to reason, but no motivated reasoning. As far as we can see, this undermines the support Kahan et al. 1 Such effects go under different names in the literature; Taber and Lodge (2006) for instance detect a "sophistication effect" in their data. Our focus will be on a particular and very influential study by finding an effect of precisely numeracy; thus our label. ...
In a series of very influential papers, Dan Kahan argues for “the identity protective cognition thesis”: the claim that politically motivated reasoning is a major factor explaining current levels of polarization over matters of fact, especially in the US. An important part of his case consists of experimental data supporting the claim that ideological polarization is more extreme amongst more numerate individuals. In this paper, we take a close look at how precisely this “numeracy effect” is supposed to come about. Working with Kahan’s own notion of motivated reasoning, we reconstruct the mechanism that according to him produces the effect. Surprisingly, it turns out to involve plenty of motivation to reason, but no motivated reasoning. This undermines the support he takes the numeracy effect to provide for the identity protective cognition hypothesis.
... The fact that biased belief updating occurs is undisputed (to our knowledge), and the focus is on understanding the factors that play a role. In particular, a prominent line of work supports the (perhaps counterintuitive) hypothesis that the more cognitively sophisticated a partisan is, the more politically biased is their belief update process [16,17,12,11]. These results are challenged by more recent work by Tappin et al. [18], who found that greater analytical thinking is associated with belief updates that are less biased, using an experimental design that explicitly measures the proximity of belief updates to a correct Bayesian posterior. ...
We introduce and study the problem of detecting whether an agent is updating their prior beliefs given new evidence in an optimal way that is Bayesian, or whether they are biased towards their own prior. In our model, biased agents form posterior beliefs that are a convex combination of their prior and the Bayesian posterior, where the more biased an agent is, the closer their posterior is to the prior. Since we often cannot observe the agent's beliefs directly, we take an approach inspired by information design. Specifically, we measure an agent's bias by designing a signaling scheme and observing the actions they take in response to different signals, assuming that they are maximizing their own expected utility; our goal is to detect bias with a minimum number of signals. Our main results include a characterization of scenarios where a single signal suffices and a computationally efficient algorithm to compute optimal signaling schemes.
... To test the No Costs Hypothesis (H1) at this first stage, we ask respondents how likely they are to get this vaccine and how safe or effective (depending on which track they were on) they feel it is. There are of course numerous drivers of vaccination intentions-many of them unrelated to the threat assessments that we manipulated here (Friedman 2019)-and many respondents will have entered the experiment with strong motivations for accepting or rejecting the information we provided (Taber and Lodge 2006). This is not disruptive to our purpose of gauging whether reactions vary across the randomly assigned treatment conditions. ...
Uncertainty is a fact of political life but not a fact of political communication. Elites are prone to make confident predictions and downplay uncertainty about future outcomes, presumably fearing that the acknowledgement of uncertainty would undermine public confidence in their predictions and the evidence they are based on. But this calculation might both exaggerate the costs and downplay the potential benefits of reporting uncertainty. On costs, the evidence from previous studies is mixed; on benefits, previous research has neglected the possibility that, by acknowledging that outcomes may be worse than expected, those communicating uncertainty will dampen public reactions to the bad news. Here, based on a two-stage online survey experiment (N = 2,165) from December 2020 about COVID-19 vaccines, we find results suggesting that governments are well advised to communicate uncertainty. The costs at Stage 1 were low: reporting a confidence interval around the safety and effectiveness of a hypothetical COVID-19 vaccine did not undermine belief in the statistics or intentions to take the vaccine. And there were indeed benefits at Stage 2: when outcomes turned out to be worse than expected but within that confidence interval, confidence in the vaccine was partly insulated from negative effects.
... A traditional literature in the domain of political psychology, on the existence of a 'backfire effect' (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010), speaks against this prediction. Early research indicated that encounters with uncongenial evidence can lead partisans to intensify their pre-existing worldview, instead of conceding or adjusting their beliefs toward the evidence (Lord et al., 1979;Nyhan & Reifler, 2010;Taber & Lodge, 2006). For instance, when provided corrective information on controversial political issues in American politics, such as the war in Iraq, tax cuts, and stem cell research, participants tended to strengthen their misperceptions about such facts (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010). ...
Many bioliberals endorse broadly consequentialist frameworks in normative ethics, implying that a progressive stance on matters of bioethical controversy could stem from outcome-based reasoning. This raises an intriguing empirical prediction: encouraging outcome-based reflection could yield a shift toward bioliberal views among non-experts as well. To evaluate this hypothesis, we selected seven divisive issues (e.g., vaccines, abortion, or GMOs), and identified the empirical premises underlying moral disagreements between liberals and conservatives. In exploratory and confirmatory experiments (total N = 748), we assessed whether people spontaneously engage in consequentialist reasoning by asking how their moral views change after momentarily reflecting on the underlying empirical questions. Our findings indicate that reflection had no overall treatment effect on the central tendency or dispersion in moral attitudes when compared to pre-reflection measures collected two weeks prior. Autoregressive models provided evidence that participants engaged in consequentialist moral reasoning, but this self-guided reflection produced neither moral ‘progress’ (shifts in the distributions’ central tendency) nor moral ‘consensus’ (reductions in their dispersion). These results imply that flexibility in people’s search for empirical answers may limit the potential for consequentialist reflection to foster moral consensus.
... Within political psychology, scholars have identified directional motivated reasoning as a likely mechanism by which elite cues shape mass opinion. In this cognitive process, individuals seek out and give more weight to information that confirms their prior beliefs (including their partisan affiliations), while giving less weight to contradictory information (Kahan et al., 2011;Taber & Lodge, 2006). ...
The United States faces multiple political challenges to achieving the rapid cuts in carbon emissions called for by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Among these are the long-standing issue of partisan polarization and the newly emerging problem of climate doom and defeatism. These challenges are not only barriers to agenda-setting and enactment, but can also threaten the durability of policies over time. This study uses a survey experiment from a nationally representative sample (n = 1760) to examine the impact of partisan cues and fatalistic rhetoric on support for the climate provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. We find that Republicans and Independents exposed to Democratic Party cues expressed less support for the IRA. We also find that Independents respondents exposed to a fatalistic message had reduced support for the IRA. These findings underscore the importance of framing in the post-enactment period and suggest that the IRA may be vulnerable to retrenchment or reversal.
... In the EDM literature, the tendency is encapsulated in the assimilation effect, which describes a phenomenon that citizens assimilate their satisfaction evaluation towards their previous expectation to reduce cognitive dissonance (Van Ryzin 2004). In the information provision context, when people come across new information that conflicts with their prior perceptions, they may pursue either an accuracy goal by updating their perceptions and relevant attitudes, or a directional goal to maintain consistency with their existing beliefs and preferences (Taber and Lodge 2006). For those who firmly believe in their perceptions, contradicting information will cause them more intense dissonance, and they are more likely to pursue the directional goal by ignoring the new information or interpreting it in ways that are consistent with their existing beliefs and preferences (Kunda 1990). ...
... The knowledge deficit model suggests that providing people with factual information should result in greater support for scientific issues; however, empirical research in science education and communication has shown that this model is flawed and incomplete (see Simis et al. 2016 for discussion). Group attachments, such as political parties, are instrumental in explaining how individuals process new information or construct their attitudes and beliefs (Taber and Lodge 2006). Political orientation can also play a powerful role in what is accepted as legitimate knowledge or facts (Henderson and Zarger 2017). ...
... Different lines of research have sought to examine the effects of economic crisis on individuals' political attitudes and behavior. Some studies contended that political and ideological beliefs adopted early in life tend to endure drastic changes and persist during economic crisis (Krosnick and Alwin 1989;Redlawsk 2002;Taber and Lodge 2006;Bisgaard, 2015;Anderson and Singer 2008); others found either negligible links between economic crisis and changes in political behavior (Fiorina 1978, 426;Klorman 1978, 31;Wides 1976), or no conclusive evidence of change in political attitudes toward the government after several economic downturns (Kenworthy and Owens 2011, 196). However, research conducted in Europe has shown that individuals may shift their electoral support from incumbent elites towards opposition parties due to economic hardship (Vasilopoulos and C. Bedock 2015, 178-180;Nezi 2012, 498-505;Magni 2015, 10). ...
The study evaluates the extent of land use, land cover, and land surface temperature change between August 2000 and August 2019 in the Al ‘Ain region in the southeast. the United Arab Emirates using Landsat satellite images. The satellite imageries
have been classified by both unsupervised and supervised classification methods using ENVI software. In an unsupervised technique, the ISODATA clustering algorithm will be used for the classification. The resulting image will be used as a reference and
for understanding the distribution of pixels with different digital numbers. In the supervised classification method, the maximum likelihood algorithm will classify the image based on the region of interest (training sets) provided by the user based on the field knowledge. Changes in land use/ land cover between 2000 and 2019 were quantified using post-classification analysis in Geographic information system.
Followed by atmospheric correction and LST retrieval. The results have shown a dramatic change in land cover and an obvious increase in land surface temperature over the 19 years’ study period. The composition of land use/ landcover features significantly influences the magnitude of land surface temperature, and the percent cover of the urban area had an unexpected inverse effect. In contrast, the percent of vegetation is the most fundamental factor in reducing land surface land surface temperature. Using the topical approach, the researchers suggest that the leadership can directly minimize the urban heat island effect in Al ‘Ain city by keeping the cooling effects of
urban greenery.
Keywords: Al ‘Ain city, UAE, land use/ land cover, land surface temperature,
Landsat, urban heat island
The aim of this research is to answer the research question "What is the motivation behind political misinformation and the effect it has on society through social media platforms?".
Media campaigns can create change in their audiences directly via message exposure and indirectly via conversations about the campaign. An experiment (N = 232) exposed regular consumers of sugar-sweetened beverages to either strong or weak messages that advocated reduced consumption, then allowed conversation or did not. There was evidence of direct media effects in that heavy drinkers who privately judged the messages as effective reported higher intended consumption reduction. However, when conversation was allowed, it erased the desired effect of campaign messages on intended reduction. Heavy drinkers had less favorable conversations about strong campaign messages than weak ones. Further, analytic language (e.g., but, because) augmented the persuasiveness of strong messages among heavy drinkers, but detracted from the persuasiveness of weak messages. Thus, we observed a complex interplay between intrapersonal processes devoted to the accurate assessment of campaign messages and interpersonal processes that defended existing levels of sugary beverage consumption.
This article first describes and then proposes a practical solution to the professional dilemma between the duty of impartiality and the duty of human rights advocacy that many teachers experience when teaching and talking about politically sensitive issues with students. The article begins by presenting an analysis of the source and signification of the tension between impartiality and human rights advocacy based on evidence from research on teachers’ perspectives, the conceptual literature on teaching and learning about controversial issues, and the legal and ethical framework of education. Then, drawing on scholarship on respect for students’ right to freedom of religion, the article advances and defends set of basic pedagogical guidelines for teaching and talking about politically sensitive issues that permit teachers to maintain a professional stance of impartiality without abrogating their responsibility to act as human rights advocates. Key to squaring the circle between impartiality and human rights advocacy, the article argues, is for teachers to strive to remain descriptive in their treatment of politically sensitive issues and insist on high standards of reasoning and evidence while at the same time respecting students’ right to an opinion, no matter how mistaken that opinion may seem.
Policy process theories posit that focusing events can trigger significant shifts in public attention and policy preferences, thereby reshaping public agenda setting. Prior studies, however, have not clearly defined the scope of public opinion changes induced by these focusing events, leading to inconsistent empirical findings. This study aims to reconceptualize the multiple layers of public opinion and formulate testable hypotheses to investigate the causal effects of a major focusing event—the 2016 Orlando nightclub mass shooting—on public opinion. Using original and unique survey data collected immediately pre‐ and post‐Orlando shooting, we find that this event significantly heightened public attention to terror‐related issues, particularly armed terror attacks on civilians. This increased attention translated into heightened support for augmented government counterterrorism spending. However, the event did not significantly alter public attention or support for government spending on other terror‐related acts less relevant to the Orlando shooting. Moreover, the event did not change individuals' policy preferences regarding specific policy proposals to address mass shootings. Our study enriches public policy and public opinion research and provides fresh insights into the relationship between focusing events and public agenda setting.
Istanbul Convention, which is a polarizing issue between conservative (right-wing) and liberal (left-wing) people in Turkey, is an important step in the struggle against violence against women. This thesis aims to investigate the reasons behind this polarization in the culture-war issues and make claims about possible reconciliation. In this regard, two studies were conducted, including the relationship of Moral Foundations Theory. Study 1 is qualitative research about opinions toward the Istanbul Convention and violence against women. Results of Study 1 show that violence against women is a problem that compromise exists between liberals and conservatives, but there is a polarization toward the Istanbul Convention issue in
the context of moral foundations and political ideologies literature. In addition, people’s level of awareness toward the convention is crucial to this situation. Study 2 is an experimental study investigating the moral framing effect on the polarization towards the Istanbul Convention, controlling the level of partisanship, awareness toward the convention, and demographic variables. Results of Study 2 show there is partial support for the hypotheses. Political orientation and type of framing have significant effects on the level of support for the Istanbul Convention, but the interaction of these two variables is non-significant. The results were discussed for researchers and policy-making authorities.
Comprehensive Synthesis of the aforementioned phenomena, all perceived from a globalized and integrated perspective of digital and social media.
Issue prioritization is the first stage of attention-based theories of decision-making, but remains theoretically and empirically uncharted territory in public administration research. We propose and test how issue prioritization is informed by the characteristics of the performance information on which decision-makers rely, in particular its source (internal or external information), nature (objective or subjective information), aspiration level (historical, social, or coercive aspirations), and required cognitive effort (attention costs). Furthermore, we theorize how these characteristics of performance information determine issue prioritization decisions of political and managerial decision-makers in different ways. We empirically examine issue prioritization decisions in road maintenance and primary school education using a discrete choice experiment among 2,313 local government officials. The experiment reveals that decision-makers are more likely to prioritize issues that are signaled through objective performance measures and that are articulated relative to coercive aspirations, but that the effects of the information’s source and attention costs differ between policy domains. Comparison of observational variation regarding decision-makers’ roles indicates that public managers more strongly prioritize road maintenance issues that are articulated in objective performance information, but not in primary school education. The study advances public administration research and theory with a “horizontal” behavioral perspective on decision-makers’ information processing to prioritize between simultaneous performance issues.
What shapes citizens’ perceptions of long-term welfare state sustainability? Past work hints at three explanations: information about fiscal pressure, deservingness views of recipient groups, and left-right ideology. We consider all three in an experiment exposing people to information about fiscal costs and/or low deservingness in the labor market domain. Left-right ideology functions as a moderator. Unlike past work, which has concentrated on demographic pressures, information about fiscal costs does not generate worries about sustainability (separately or combined with deservingness cues). Rather, left-right ideology moderates reactions. People on the left seem to question and counterargue against fiscal pressure, such that when facing negative information, they develop more positive sustainability views. This counter-reaction coexists with statistically insignificant effects in the negative direction among people on the right. These ideological contingencies arise without partisan cues, suggesting that welfare state pressure itself is ideologically controversial in the labor market domain.
Transgender rights are a polarizing topic. When examining the rhetoric used by those opposed to transgender rights, it often seems like their arguments contradict each other (e.g., claiming that transgender people are a negligible minority but simultaneously “taking over”). One explanation for this contradiction could be that different arguments are endorsed by different people. However, across 4 studies ( N = 2,159), we consistently find a positive relationship between endorsement of contradictory anti-transgenderarguments among the same people, even when they themselves view them as contradictory and when the contradictory nature is made salient. We also examine the strategies opponents of transgender rights employ to resolve these contradictions. Our work contributes to a better understanding of modern anti-transgender beliefs in the United States and has implications for those trying to combat harmful anti-transgender rhetoric.
This article aims to donate an analytical and critical reading of the figure of
human behavior in its political dimension, by relying on an approach that examines
its epistemological and methodological source of contemporary psychology,
specifically the psychology of political behavior and action. Accordingly, we find a
methodological intersection between the approaches of political science and
political psychology at the level of study, through presentation, criticism, and
experimentation, some Manifestations of political action that are endemic in the
unconscious as a cognitive and collective structure, which extends from the distant
past in the advance of the development of social action in general and politics
Specifically. The first to evacuate this political action, we find the social conflict,
which is a reconciliation in the presidential focus. When the displacement is to the
defensive from the ideological perception, what is evident in the general
representation (collective/throng) or the special (individually/solitary), the
constituent of the conflict, and that is in the direction of the realization of the self
(Political dominance). thus, the conclusions of this analytical and critical reading,
that the political conflict is based on the principle of survival of the fittest according
to what the conditions of competitive selection between the parties to this conflict
impose, and what is inspired by the possibility for negotiation about the directions
of political behavior expressed in the daily practice of the political actor in his
symbolic relationship with his throng. The political action has two main path; a
conflict and interest.
Keywords: Political behavior; political psychology; social conflict; interest;
political dominance.
Motivated reasoning posits that people distort how they process information in the direction of beliefs they find attractive. This paper creates a novel experimental design to identify motivated reasoning from Bayesian updating when people have preconceived beliefs. It analyzes how subjects assess the veracity of information sources that tell them the median of their belief distribution is too high or too low. Bayesians infer nothing about the source veracity, but motivated beliefs are evoked. Evidence supports politically motivated reasoning about immigration, income mobility, crime, racial discrimination, gender, climate change, and gun laws. Motivated reasoning helps explain belief biases, polarization, and overconfidence. (JEL C91, D12, D72, D83, D91, L82)
Considerable efforts are currently underway to mitigate the negative impacts of echo chambers, such as increased susceptibility to fake news and resistance towards accepting scientific evidence. Prior research has presented the development of computer systems that support the consumption of news information from diverse political perspectives to mitigate the echo chamber effect. However, existing studies still lack the ability to effectively support the key processes of news information consumption and quantitatively identify a political stance towards the information. In this paper, we present HearHere, an AI-based web system designed to help users accommodate information and opinions from diverse perspectives. HearHere facilitates the key processes of news information consumption through two visualizations. Visualization 1 provides political news with quantitative political stance information, derived from our graph-based political classification model, and users can experience diverse perspectives (Hear). Visualization 2 allows users to express their opinions on specific political issues in a comment form and observe the position of their own opinions relative to pro-liberal and pro-conservative comments presented on a map interface (Here). Through a user study with 94 participants, we demonstrate the feasibility of HearHere in supporting the consumption of information from various perspectives. Our findings highlight the importance of providing political stance information and quantifying users' political status as a means to mitigate political polarization. In addition, we propose design implications for system development, including the consideration of demographics such as political interest and providing users with initiatives.
How can scientists best inform the public and change attitudes? Does the message or the messenger matter more? We test the effect of scientific expert messengers and messages in a preregistered, nationally representative survey experiment in the United States. Consistent with our hypotheses, scientists can move public attitudes in areas where knowledge is based on a non-ideological misperception to a greater extent than the same science-based message from another source. Although we focus on political science as a field and Congressional term limits in the United States as a topic area, our findings have broader implications for science communication with policymaking relevance given the persistence of misperceptions among the public across all natural and social science research fields.
We describe and test two process models of candidate evaluation. The memory-based model holds that evaluations are dependent on the mix of pro and con information retrieved from memory. The impression-driven model holds that evaluations are formed and updated “on-line” as information is encountered. The results provide evidence for the existence of stereotyping and projection biases that render the mix of evidence available in memory a nonveridical representation of the information to which subjects were exposed. People do not rely on the specific candidate information available in memory. Rather, consistent with the logic of the impression-driven processing model, an “on-line” judgment formed when the information was encountered best predicts candidate evaluation. The results raise both methodological and substantive challenges to how political scientists measure and model the candidate evaluation process.
Mechanisms for controlling inference processes are analyzed according to the models of intuitive scientist (who desires optimal, accurate conclusions) and intuitive lawyer (who desires predetermined, particular conclusions), using a step model of the inference process. The first step, gathering evidence, can be regulated by moving the termination point and by looking in particular places for evidence. The second step, drawing immediate implications from bits of evidence, is presumably automatic and hence relatively immune to regulation. The third step, assessing implications, can override or discredit implications of specific pieces of evidence, and it can be used to regulate inference through combating bias or through attacking and discrediting unwanted implications. The final step, involving integration of assorted evidence and implications, can be regulated by manipulating decision rules and criteria.
The study of emotion in politics has been active, especially as it relates to the personality of political leaders and as an explanation for how people evaluate significant features around them. Researchers have been divided into two groups - those who study leaders and those who study publics. The research programs have also been divided between those who use emotion to explain reliance on early experience that dominates contemporary judgment and those who use emotion to explain why people respond to the immediate contemporary circumstances around them. More recently, theory and research have attempted to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory roles by integrating them. Emotion's role in politics is pervasive both because emotion enables past experience to be encoded with its evaluative history and because emotion enables contemporary circumstances to be quickly evaluated. More recently still, theoretical models and supporting evidence suggest that there are multiple channels of emotional evaluations.
We find strong support for an on-line model of the candidate evaluation process that in contrast to memory-based models shows that citizens are responsive to campaign information, adjusting their overall evaluation of the candidates in response to their immediate assessment of campaign messages and events. Over time people forget most of the campaign information they are exposed to but are nonetheless able to later recollect their summary affective evaluation of candidates which they then use to inform their preferences and vote choice. These findings have substantive, methodological, and normative implications for the study of electoral behavior. Substantively, we show how campaign information affects voting behavior. Methodologically, we demonstrate the need to measure directly what campaign information people actually attend to over the course of a campaign and show that after controling for the individual's on-line assessment of campaign messages, National Election Study-type recall measures prove to be spurious as explanatory variables. Finally, we draw normative implications for democratic theory of on-line processing, concluding that citizens appear to be far more responsive to campaign messages than conventional recall models suggest.
A 1979 study by Lord, Ross, and Lepper has been widely cited as showing that examination of mixed evidence on a topic leads to polarization of attitudes. The polarization phenomenon, we suggest, in fact encompasses two distinct change patterns - a shift from an initially moderate to a more extreme position (regarded here as genuine polarization) and a shift from an initially neutral to a moderate position (which might better be termed "articulating a position"). The findings reported here indicate that genuine polarization is a real hut infrequent outcome of exposure to mixed evidence. In addition, we offer data in support of the view that the effective component of such interventions is simply cognitive engagement, rather than exposure to new evidence.
In this note we elaborate on the conditions under which on-line and memory-based strategies of political candidate evaluation can be implemented. We suggest that the structure of information may be an important contextual variable affecting the voter's choice of these strategies. In addition, we propose that citizens with less political sophistication are particularly sensitive to structural differences in the political information environment. We use an experimental design that manipulates the information-processing context to test these ideas. Our results suggest that the context in which information is presented plays a critical role in moderating the influence of individual differences in political sophistication.
If preference-inconsistent information initiates more effortful cognitive analysis than does preference-consistent information, then people should be more sensitive processors of information they do not want to believe than of information they do want to believe. Three studies supported this prediction. Study 1 found that inferences drawn from favorable interpersonal feedback revealed a correspondence bias, whereas inferences drawn from unfavorable feedback were sensitive to situational constraint. Study 2 showed this sensitivity to the quality of unfavorable feedback to disappear under cognitive load. Study 3 showed that evaluations of the accuracy of favorable medical diagnoses were insensitive to the probability of alternative explanation, whereas evaluations of unfavorable diagnoses were sensitive to probability information. The importance of adaptive considerations in theories of motivated reasoning is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
People who hold strong opinions on complex social issues are likely to examine relevant empirical evidence in a biased manner. They are apt to accept "confirming" evidence at face value while subjecting "disconfirming" evidence to critical evaluation, and, as a result, draw undue support for their initial positions from mixed or random empirical findings. Thus, the result of exposing contending factions in a social dispute to an identical body of relevant empirical evidence may be not a narrowing of disagreement but rather an increase in polarization. To test these assumptions, 48 undergraduates supporting and opposing capital punishment were exposed to 2 purported studies, one seemingly confirming and one seemingly disconfirming their existing beliefs about the deterrent efficacy of the death penalty. As predicted, both proponents and opponents of capital punishment rated those results and procedures that confirmed their own beliefs to be the more convincing and probative ones, and they reported corresponding shifts in their beliefs as the various results and procedures were presented. The net effect of such evaluations and opinion shifts was the postulated increase in attitude polarization. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Three experiments show that information consistent with a preferred conclusion is examined less critically than information inconsistent with a preferred conclusion, and consequently, less information is required to reach the former than the latter. In Study 1, Ss judged which of 2 students was most intelligent, believing they would work closely with the one they chose. Ss required less information to decide that a dislikable student was less intelligent than that he was more intelligent. In Studies 2 and 3, Ss given an unfavorable medical test result took longer to decide their test result was complete, were more likely to retest the validity of their result, cited more life irregularities that might have affected test accuracy, and rated test accuracy as lower than did Ss receiving more favorable diagnoses. Results suggest that a core component of self-serving bias is the differential quantity of cognitive processing given to preference-consistent and preference-inconsistent information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two experiments provided evidence for a disconfirmation bias in argument evaluation such that arguments incompatible with prior beliefs are scrutinized longer, subjected to more extensive refutational analyses, and consequently are judged to be weaker than arguments compatible with prior beliefs. The idea that people are unable to evaluate evidence independently of prior beliefs has been documented elsewhere, including in the classic study by C. G. Lord, L. Ross, and M. R. Lepper (see record
1981-05421-001) . The present findings contribute to this literature by specifying the processes by which prior beliefs affect the evaluation of evidence. The authors compare the disconfirmation model to several other models of how prior beliefs influence current judgments and present data that provide support for the disconfirmation model. Results indicate that whether a person's prior belief is accompanied by emotional conviction affects the magnitude and form of the disconfirmation bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Four studies examined the generality of attitude polarization (C. G. Lord et al, 1979). Biased assimilation of essays on 2 controversial issues was substantial and correlated with reported attitude change. Polarization was observed for reported attitude change on capital punishment and generally stronger in Ss with extreme than moderate attitudes. Polarization was not indicated in a pre–post measurement design. For affirmative action, reported polarization was not observed. The hypothesis that Ss reporting polarization would subsequently write particularly strong essays was not supported, although those reporting depolarization wrote relatively weak essays. The results suggest the relevance of individual differences in reported attitude change but do not confirm the powerful inferences frequently drawn regarding the pervasive, undesirable consequences of self-reported attitude polarization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article outlines a cognitive-affective model of the role of social groups in political thinking. The model is based on the assumptions that people have stored information and emotional reactions to social groups, and that people are purposive in their thinking about social groups in the sense that they are interested in understanding what various groups have obtained and whether it is deserved. The process through which social groups influence political thinking varies significantly depending upon whether an individual identifies with the group in question. Generally, people are more inclined to feel sympathetic towards the groups to which they belong. These ideas are illustrated with an empirical analysis that focuses on women's issues and makes use of data collected in the 1984 National Election Study Pilot Study.
Many social scientists want to explain why people do what they do. A barrier to constructing such explanations used to be a lack of information on the relationship between cognition and choice. Now, recent advances in cognitive science, economics, political science, and psychology have clarified this relationship. In Elements of Reason, eighteen scholars from across the social sciences use these advances to uncover the cognitive foundations of social decision making. They answer tough questions about how people see and process information and provide new explanations of how basic human needs, the environment, and past experiences combine to affect human choices. Elements of Reason is written for a broad audience and should be read by anyone for whom 'Why do people do what they do?' is an important question. It is the rare book that transforms abstract debates about rationality and reason into empirically relevant explanations of how people choose.
Citizens and Politics: Perspectives from Political Psychology brings together some of the research on citizen decision making. It addresses the questions of citizen political competence from different political psychology perspectives. Some of the authors in this volume look to affect and emotions to determine how people reach political judgements, others to human cognition and reasoning. Still others focus on perceptions or basic political attitudes such as political ideology. Several demonstrate the impact of values on policy preferences. The collection features chapters from some of the most talented political scientists in the field.
This is the first comprehensive critical evaluation of the use of rational choice theory in political science. Writing in an accessible and nontechnical style, Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro assess rational choice theory where it is reputed to be most successful: the study of collective action, the behavior of political parties and politicians, and such phenomena as voting cycles and Prisoner's Dilemmas. In their hard-hitting critique, Green and Shapiro demonstrate that the much heralded achievements of rational choice theory are in fact deeply suspect and that fundamental rethinking is needed if rational choice theorists are to contribute to the understanding of politics. In their final chapters, they anticipate and respond to a variety of possible rational choice responses to their arguments, thereby initiating a dialogue that is bound to continue for some time.
People are exposed to disproportionate amounts of supportive information, and it is extremely difficult to alter the beliefs of people holding clear opinions. This chapter examines whether or not a general psychological preference exists for information that is compatible with pre-existing beliefs, assesses the relevant evidence, and presents an analysis of the factors, which appear to affect voluntary exposure to information. Two general types of explanations have been offered—one account makes use of a wide variety of mechanisms by which an individual resists accepting a discrepant persuasive message with which he has been confronted, and the other is voluntary exposure to information. There are two major alternatives that have been proposed to determine the variables that affect selectivity of exposure: an accelerated attack on mechanisms by which people resist persuasive messages, with which they have been confronted; and the other major alternative is to direct greater research effort to the general problem of information preferences. The laboratory evidence does not support the hypothesis that people prefer to be exposed to supportive as opposed to non-supportive information. A variety of factors, such as confidence and familiarity may limit the conditions under which selective exposure occurs. Selective exposure represents one way in which people actively avoid being confronted with arguments counter to their own opinions. Therefore, selective exposure has been used frequently as a reason for the apparent ineffectiveness of propaganda and information campaigns.
This chapter highlights the recent research on the selective exposure to information. The term “selective exposure” implies several assumptions concerning the decision-making process. It assumes that the seeking out of decision relevant information does not cease once a decision is made. This notion also implies that this post-decisional information seeking and evaluation is not impartial but, rather, is biased by certain factors activated during the decision-making process. This chapter discusses the fundamental theses of dissonance theory as it relates to selective exposure and gives a short overview of the early research. This chapter describes new research, including the experiments designed to specify those factors most important in influencing informational selectivity: the effects of choice and commitment on selective information seeking, selectivity and refutability of arguments, the amount of available information and its usefulness, the usefulness of decision reversibility, as well as the intensity of dissonance. This chapter reports the results on some additional variables-cost of information, the reliability of dissonant information, and the effects of personality.
Voters in mass elections are notorious for their apparent lack of information about relevant political matters. While some scholars argue that an electorate of well-informed voters is necessary for the production of responsive electoral outcomes, others argue that apparently ignorant voters will suffice because they can adapt their behavior to the complexity of electoral choice. To evaluate the validity of these arguments, I develop and analyze a survey of California voters who faced five complicated insurance reform ballot initiatives. I find that access to a particular class of widely available information shortcuts allowed badly informed voters to emulate the behavior of relatively well informed voters. This finding is suggestive of the conditions under which voters who lack encyclopedic information about the content of electoral debates can nevertheless use information shortcuts to vote as though they were well informed.
Two experiments examined the effects of subjects' beliefs on syllogistic inference. The first experiment showed that beliefs biased the spontaneous conclusions that subjects drew for themselves. These effects were more marked for indeterminate premises (which yield no non-trivial valid conclusions) than for determinate premises (which yield valid conclusions). There was also an effect of the nature of the beliefs: conclusions that were false by definition had a bigger effect on deductions than those that were false as a matter of fact. The second experiment replicated the finding for determinate syllogisms, using problems in moods in which the status of the valid conclusion could not be altered by conversion of the premises. Beliefs accordingly appear to affect the process of reasoning rather than the interpretation of premises.
Using data from four national surveys, we examined the role of affective-cognitive ambivalence in moderating the relative impact of affect and cognition on overall attitudes and behavior. Each survey assessed the affective and cognitive components of attitudes toward presidential candidates, as well as overall candidate attitudes and reported voting behavior. We found support for a primacy of affect (vs. cognition) effect among respondents withambivalentaffective-cognitive structures: For respondents with oppositely valenced affect and cognition, affect generally exerted a stronger influence on candidate attitudes and voting behavior than did cognition. However, for respondents withunivalentaffective-cognitive structures (i.e., similarly valenced affect and cognition), affect and cognition exerted a roughly equal influence on overall attitudes and voting behavior. Results are discussed in terms of the processes through which the ambivalence-moderated primacy of affect effect occurs, and its potential consequences.
Reviews the books, Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. 1: Theory and Method by Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (Eds.) (1985); and Handbook of Social Psychology, Vol. 2: Special Fields and Applications (3rd ed.) by Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson (Eds.) (1985). Readers of the new Handbook can come to appreciate the scope and development of social psychology by perusing Jones's historical review of the field's past 50 years. The Handbook features not general theories of attitudes and social behavior, but theories that function as guiding ideas and that yield useful insights and specific predictions for a limited range of phenomena. Such approaches typically provide partial models of a limited range of phenomena. Volume 2 contains reviews of special fields and applications. The topics that the editors have chosen to represent in Handbook chapters have gravitated to some extent as the field of social psychology has evolved. Noteworthy in the new edition is the addition of chapters on sex roles, interpersonal attraction, environmental psychology, social deviance, altruism and aggression, and the application of social psychology. Overall, the Handbook is extremely impressive and should give readers a sense of pride about the progress that has been made in social psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Theory: Just as persuasion is the crux of politics, so too is argument the key to political persuasion. Political arguments about policy have at least two dimensions, namely, whether the argument is for or against the policy and whether the argument is hard or easy to comprehend. Combining these two dimensions leads to four argument types: hard-pro, hard-con, easy-pro, and easy-con. Our purpose is to determine which of these four types more strongly influence citizens' policy judgments. Hypotheses: Con arguments will be more persuasive than pro arguments. The literature does not offer a clear prediction about the relative effectiveness of hard and easy arguments or the four argument types. Methods: We use a within and between experimental design, measuring subjects' opinions about NAFTA and health care at three points in time. Opinion change is analyzed by ANOVA. Results: Arguments against NAFTA and health care worked especially well. On NAFTA con arguments were most persuasive when they were also hard, on health care when they were also easy. Political awareness mediated the effectiveness of arguments across both issues, while the intensity of partisanship mediated only on health care. We attribute this latter difference to the partisan split in Congress on health care, a split that did not emerge on NAFTA.
This article challenges the often untested assumption that cognitive "heuristics" improve the decisionmaking abilities of everyday voters. The potential benefits and costs of five common political heuristics are discussed. A new dynamic process-tracing methodology is employed to directly observe the use of these five heuristics by voters in a mock presidential election campaign. We find that cognitive heuristics are at times employed by almost all voters and that they are particularly likely to be used when the choice situation facing voters is complex. A hypothesized interaction between political sophistication and heuristic use on the quality of decision making is obtained across several different experiments, however. As predicted, heuristic use generally increases the probability of a correct vote by political experts but decreases the probability of a correct vote by novices. A situation in which experts can be led astray by heuristic use is also illustrated. Discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for strategies to increase input from under-represented groups into the political process.
From Stokes's (1963) early critique on, it has been clear to empirical researchers that the traditional spatial theory of elections is seriously flawed. Yet fully a quarter century later, that theory remains the dominant paradigm for understanding mass-elite linkage in politics. We present an alternative spatial theory of elections that we argue has greater empirical verisimilitude.
Based on the ideas of symbolic politics, the directional theory assumes that most people have a diffuse preference for a certain direction of policy-making and that people vary in the intensity with which they hold those preferences. We test the two competing theories at the individual level with National Election Study data and find the directional theory more strongly supported than the traditional spatial theory. We then develop the implications of the directional theory for candidate behavior and assess the predictions in light of evidence from the U.S. Congress.
▪ Abstract Do people assimilate new information in an efficient and unbiased manner—that is, do they update prior beliefs in accordance with Bayes' rule? Or are they selective in the way that they gather and absorb new information? Although many classic studies in political science and psychology contend that people resist discordant information, more recent research has tended to call the selective perception hypothesis into question. We synthesize the literatures on biased assimilation and belief polarization using a formal model that encompasses both Bayesian and biased learning. The analysis reveals (a) the conditions under which these phenomena may be consistent with Bayesian learning, (b) the methodological inadequacy of certain research designs that fail to control for preferences or prior information, and (c) the limited support that exists for the more extreme variants of the selective perception hypothesis.
While candidates regularly spend much time and effort campaigning on foreign and defense policies, the thrust of prevailing scholarly opinion is that voters possess little information and weak attitudes on these issues, which therefore have negligible impact on their voting behavior. We resolve this anomaly by arguing that public attitudes on foreign and defense policies are available and cognitively accessible, that the public has perceived clear differences between the candidates on these issues in recent elections, and that these issues have affected the public's vote choices. Data indicate that these conclusions are appropriate for foreign affairs issues and domestic issues
More than eighty original essays devoted to research on cognitive consistency and the reformulation of consistency theories. A "statement of position" by most of those active in the area. Harvard Book List (edited) 1971 #479 (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This classic text surveys a number of different theoretical approaches to the related phenomena of attitude and belief change. These theories are grouped into seven major approaches, each presented and evaluated in a separate chapter. Each contributes in an important way to a complete understanding of the persuasion process. Appropriate for both upper level undergraduates and graduates in the social sciences.
A model of the relationship between attitude involvement and attitude accessibilitywas developed and tested. The model specifies that attitude involvement leads to selective(biased) issue-related information-gathering strategies, which in turn produce extreme andunivalent (unambivalent) attitudes. Finally, attitudes associated with univalent and extremeunderlying structures should occasion relatively little decision conflict and thus should be highlyaccessible. Questionnaire response data gathered in a national telephone survey and from twosamples of undergraduates revealed that both attitude extremity and attitude ambivalence onselected political issues mediated the relationship between attitude involvement and attitudeaccessibility. Some findings indicated that selective processing mediated the relationshipbetween attitude involvement and attitude extremity and ambivalence. Discussion focuses on theprocesses linking involvement to accessibility, the factors that moderate theambivalence-accessibility relationship, and the relevance of the model to media-based primingeffects and tothe nature of public opinion and the survey response.
We report the results of three experimental tests of the “hot cognition” hypothesis, which posits that all sociopolitical concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged and that this affective charge is automatically activated within milliseconds on mere exposure to the concept, appreciably faster than conscious appraisal of the object.
We find support for the automaticity of affect toward political leaders, groups, and issues; specifically:
We conclude with a discussion of the “so what?” question—the conceptual, substantive, and normative implications of hot cognition for political judgments, evaluations, and choice. One clear expectation, given that affect appears to be activated automatically on mere exposure to sociopolitical concepts, is that most citizens, but especially those sophisticates with strong political attitudes, will be biased information processors.
The recording of event-related potentials (ERPs) in the brain has allowed for a better understanding of human sensory and cognitive processing. This technique may also prove useful in studying implicit social attitudes and their effects on information processing. Here, ERPs were used in a study of “hot cognition” in the context of political concepts. Hot cognition, as applied to the political domain, posits that all sociopolitical concepts that have been evaluated in the past are affectively charged, and that this affective charge is automatically activated from long-term memory within milliseconds of presentation of the political stimulus. During an evaluative priming task, ERP recordings showed that affectively incongruent prime/target pairs elicited an enhanced negativity with a peak latency of about 400 milliseconds relative to affectively congruent prime/target pairs. These differences suggest that automatic, implicit evaluations were made in response to strongly positive and negative political stimuli, and that these evaluations affected the subsequent processing of a high-valence adjective. Therefore, it appears that the emotional valence of a political prime is stored along with the concept itself, and that an affective response becomes active upon mere exposure to the political stimulus.
We examine the influence of two specific negative emotions (i.e., sadness and anger) on consumers' preference for an advertised product promoting either activity (e.g., exercise) or passivity (e.g., relaxation). On the basis of empirical distinctions between the level of activation accompanying sadness and anger, and drawing upon a mood-as-information perspective, we hypothesized that individuals will have a preference for activity to passivity when in an angry compared to a sad emotional state. Thus, when angry, they preferred a product advertised as active, whereas when sad they preferred a product described in more passive terms.
In two experiments, Ss were read sets of 6 or 8 personality adjectives, and asked to rate their liking of the person so described. In some conditions, S was also requested to recall the adjectives just read.The personality impression data showed a primacy (first impression) effect when recall was not required. Introduction of recall reduced the primacy and, in one condition, caused a recency effect. These results were interpreted as indicating that the primacy was primarily caused by decreased attention to the later adjectives, and that the use of concomitant recall destroyed this primacy by causing S to attend to the later adjectives more completely.The serial recall curves showed a small to moderate primacy component, and a very strong recency component. Further detailed analyses of the recall data were also given.Two implications were drawn from the data. First, it was concluded that the impression memory is distinct from the verbal memory for the adjectives. This conclusion was based on contrasts between the observed impression effects and those that would be expected if the impression depended on the verbal memory. Three objections to this conclusion, based on the possibility that recall probability was an inappropriate index of verbal-memory strength, were also discussed.Second, it was tentatively suggested that a linear model, together with the attention decrement notion, gave the best account of the data. It was finally noted that the linear model also provides a representation of the impression memory that is in harmony with the first conclusion.