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The dissertation explores the impact of motivated reasoning, a tendency for reasoning to proceed with the goal of construing evidence in ways that are supportive of a desired conclusion, for normative discussions in the epistemology of disagreement and political philosophy. The introduction provides a brief overview of the psychology of motivated reasoning and its consequences. One of these is belief polarization, a tendency for the beliefs of people who initially disagree to move toward the extremes after the persons view the same body of evidence. Another is that deliberation in groups with internal disagreement is an effective means of epistemic improvement. The introduction also provides overviews of the epistemology of disagreement and the role of disagreement for political legitimacy, and details the contributions of the four articles to these debates.Article 1 responds to arguments for the conclusion that belief polarization is a rational phenomenon. It argues that, when disagreement is salient, the biased processing of evidence that results in belief polarization is incompatible with rationality, and the resulting polarized beliefs are neither reliably formed nor supported by the evidence, properly construed. Article 2 discusses the epistemic significance of political disagreement. It shows that motivated reasoning about politically salient propositions implies that a political opposite's familiarity with relevant evidence and their intellectual virtues are inversely correlated with their perceived probability of being right, conditional on disagreement. This presents us with a puzzle in determining how significant such disagreements are, one that cannot be escaped by denying that political disagreements in general are epistemically significant. Article 3 discusses the impact of the beneficial effects of collective deliberation in groups with internal disagreement for the epistemic significance of discovered disagreement. It argues that these benefits can provide one with epistemic reason to maintain confidence in the face of discovered disagreement when doing so promotes epistemically fruitful deliberation. Article 4 discusses the impact of motivated reasoning in defense of our political or cultural values for the legitimacy of democratic decision-making. It addresses the extent to which democratic authorities should be responsive to mistaken factual beliefs in the public when these beliefs are the result of motivated reasoning in defense of controversial doctrines, and whetherfactual beliefs, even when supported by our best science, are excluded from public reason if they are entangled in a cultural dispute.

"Motivated Reasoning and Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

I wrote this thesis to create a better understanding of how individual characteristics influence our feelings, our behavior and our way of interpreting information. My focus is on financial behavior and financial information, however I also consider a political context. I investigate the (usually) enabling abilities of financial literacy and numeracy. I also consider impediments such as stereotype threat and motivated reasoning, which can prevent people from engaging in certain behaviors or from interpreting information objectively. Both processes stem from valued beliefs and psychological foundations, consequently peoples' efforts, decisions, and evaluations are based on them. The first essay, "Competence, confidence, and gender: The role of perceived and actual financial literacy in household finance," broadens our understanding of the benefits of financial competence. I contrast perceived and actual levels of financial literacy, and consider the role of numeracy and cognitive reflective ability. I conclude that perceived and actual levels of financial literacy positively affect behavior and wellbeing; however, perceived financial literacy more so than actual financial literacy. No such effect is observed for numeric ability and cognitive reflection. Furthermore, women are more anxious about financial matters even though they tend to engage more frequently in the considered financial behaviors. The second essay, "Threatening finance? Examining the gender gap in financial literacy," continues my exploration of the relationship between gender and financial literacy. In a series of studies, I investigate whether the observed gender gap in financial literacy can be identified in nonnumerical contexts, if it can be associated with confidence in financial matters, and if it can be attributed to stereotype threat, which posits that inbuilt prejudices about gender and finance undermine women's performance of tasks that involve finance. The results show that the observed gender gap in financial literacy is robust even in nonnumerical financial contexts and suggest that a stereotype threat for women in the financial domain might be present. The gender gap in financial literacy could not be attributed to a difference in (displayed) confidence. In the third essay, "Preferences for lump-sum over divided payment structures," I investigate whether or not people display systematic preferences for lump–sum or divided payment structures and how these preferences differ in gain (benefit) and loss (payment) situations. I investigate what happens when payments belong to a single underlying event, such as when people can choose to pay immediately or in installments. I also examine whether or not individual differences in time preferences, risk preferences, numeracy, and financial literacy are associated with preferences for one payment structure or the other. The aggregate results show a tendency for people to prefer obtaining and paying money in lump sums. I find no systematic indication that the considered individual differences play a role in this type of decision. The fourth essay, "Motivated reasoning when assessing the effect of refugee intake," inquires into differences in worldview ideology, whether people identify as nationally or globally oriented, hinder them from objectively interpreting information. I use an experiment to find out if people display motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about the effects of refugees on the crime rate. Our results show evidence of motivated reasoning along the lines of worldview ideology. However, individuals with higher numeric ability were less likely to engage in motivated reasoning, leading to the conclusion that motivated reasoning is more likely to be driven by feelings and emotional cues than by deliberate analytical processes.

AbstractA main rationale of performance information is to empower citizens to make informed decisions by presenting them with unambiguous information about the performance of institutions. However, even objective, clear, and unambiguous performance information is subject to biased interpretation depending on whether the information is consistent with the prior beliefs held by those who receive the information. Integrating the theory of motivated reasoning with the literature on performance information, the authors hypothesize that performance information that is inconsistent with prior beliefs is less likely to be interpreted correctly than belief‐consistent information. Using randomized survey experiments in which respondents were presented with quantitative performance data, the authors show that subjects systematically interpret performance information in ways that conform with their prior beliefs. The findings question the assumption that providing performance information automatically increases knowledge about government performance, let alone improves political decisions.

AbstractDo differences in worldview ideology hinder people from objectively interpreting the effect of immigration? In an experiment with Swedish adults (n= 1015), we investigate whether people display motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about the effects of refugee intake on crime rate. Our results show clear evidence of motivated reasoning along the lines of worldview ideology (i.e., whether people identify themselves primarily as nationally oriented or globally oriented). In scenarios where refugee intake was associated with higher crime rate, nationally oriented people were 18 percentage points more likely to make the correct assessment compared to globally oriented people. Likewise, in scenarios where refugee intake was associated with lower crime rate, nationally oriented people were 20 percentage points less likely to make the correct assessment compared to globally oriented people. Individuals with higher numeric ability were less likely to engage in motivated reasoning, suggesting that motivated reasoning more commonly is driven by feelings and emotional cues rather than deliberate analytical processes.

ObjectiveThis study sets out to examine the roles of party identification, political knowledge, education, and media use in citizens' perceptions of changes in the economy, federal deficit, poverty, and crime rates between 2001 and 2008. It also tests the predictions of motivated reasoning versus Bayesian updating in seeing how (or if) perceptions of the economy changed as conditions worsened during 2008.MethodThis research used American National Election Studies (ANES) panel data in creating regression analyses for perceptions in January and November 2008, with the former as a control for the latter. A repeated‐measures analysis of variance tracked changes in partisans' perceptions of the economy during the year.ResultsPartisanship was a robust predictor of perceptions. Political knowledge and education tended to promote perceptions that were in the same direction as actual trends, but political knowledge interacted with party identification to promote partisan polarization in perceptions. Television news exposure was the most important media variable, although it promoted pessimism on all trends. As economic conditions worsened throughout 2008, partisans' perceptions of the economy converged, suggesting that citizens, especially Republicans, updated their perceptions.ConclusionThe findings for partisanship and its interaction with political knowledge are consistent with the motivated reasoning literature, but the emergence of a bipartisan consensus about the worsening of the economy by the end of 2008 supports Bayesian updating, although it may take pretty undeniable facts for it to work.

Scholars often evaluate citizens' democratic competence by focusing on their ability to get relevant facts right. In this article, I show why this approach can yield misleading conclusions about citizen competence. I argue that although citizens with strong partisan loyalties might be forced to accept the same facts, they find alternative ways to rationalize reality. One such way, I show, is through the selective attribution of credit and blame. With four randomized experiments, conducted in diverse national settings and containing closed- as well as open-ended questions, I find that as partisans correctly updated economic beliefs to reflect new facts, they conversely attributed responsibility in a highly selective fashion. Although partisans might acknowledge the same facts, they are apt in seizing on and producing attributional arguments that fit their preferred worldviews.

Literature suggests that while without doubt people engage in selective exposure to information, this does not entail that they also engage in selective avoidance of opinion-challenging information. However, cross-cutting exposure does not always lead to dispassionate deliberation. In this commentary I explore psychological conditions as they apply to attitude-based selection and make an argument that selectivity does not stop at exposure but continues as audiences engage with information they encounter and incorporate in their decision-making. I propose the theory of motivated reasoning as a rich theoretical underpinning that helps us understand selective exposure and selective information processing.

Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens' rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing "knowledge constraints" on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, suggesting that knowledge constraints on motivated reasoning may not fully allay normative concerns of bias in the domain of international relations.