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The political-heuristics school has credited the political environment with providing easily used informational crutches that enable even poorly informed citizens to make competent political judgments. We develop a more general approach to the environment, arguing that it can either enhance or fail to enhance political judgment & that it shapes performance through the interaction of two factors: information & motivation. Using survey experiments that test citizens' ability to make tradeoffs among competing goals for health care reform, we find that performance depends heavily on environmental conditions. A combination of general information with increased motivation to act responsibly improves aggregate performance. An extremely favorable informational environment not only enhances performance, but it even eliminates the effects of individual differences in education & political sophistication. The analysis points toward reforming structures that shape the political environment as the most plausible route to improved democratic governance. 2 Tables, 2 Figures, 57 References. Adapted from the source document.

Scholars have documented the deficiencies in political knowledge among American citizens. Another problem, misinformation, has received less attention. People are misinformed when they confidently hold wrong beliefs. We present evidence of misinformation about welfare & show that this misinformation acts as an obstacle to educating the public with correct facts. Moreover, widespread misinformation can lead to collective preferences that are far different from those that would exist if people were correctly informed. The misinformation phenomenon has implications for two currently influential scholarly literatures: the study of political heuristics & the study of elite persuasion & issue framing. 2 Tables, 7 Figures, 49 References. Adapted from the source document.