Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing
In: Advances in Political Psychology, Forthcoming
In: Advances in Political Psychology, Forthcoming
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In: Forthcoming, Research in Organizational Behavior
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In: APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper
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In: IZA Discussion Paper No. 15428
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In: JOBR-D-21-02196
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The digital media environment has transformed the ways information about "collective preference" is communicated. Using 2 survey experiments, this study examines how embedded context may condition the processing and influence of an opinion poll in a multicue, source-confusion environment. Our results suggest that, in general, opinion polls are evaluated more negatively when the results are embedded in a politician's tweet. Consistent with motivated reasoning, congruent polls that support one's side tend to be perceived as more credible, which in turn leads to a more polarized issue position via poll-aligned opinion climate perception. This self-serving perception may be heightened by politician repurposing of polling outcomes, especially in the lack of pollster brand names. Importantly, there is partisan asymmetry in how contextual information may alter the processing of polling results. Above and beyond an average effect, politician uptake of polling data undermines a poll's perceived credibility to a greater extent among Democrats than Republicans.
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In: Flesken , A & Hartl , J J 2018 , ' Party Support, Values, and Perceptions of Electoral Integrity ' , Political Psychology , vol. 39 , no. 3 , pp. 707-724 . https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12431
The legitimacy of the electoral process is crucial for the consolidation of democracy. We here focus on individual perceptions of electoral integrity (IPEI) and seek to understand what factors can explain different degrees of IPEI. In particular, we use the sixth wave of the World Values Survey (2010–14) to examine how antiauthoritarian values affect individuals' directional bias, driven by political party support, in evaluating electoral integrity. The results show that IPEI do depend on an interaction of political party support and the strength of antiauthoritarian values. However, the addition of the latter does not lead to a convergence of integrity evaluations among winners and losers, as may be expected under the assumption that antiauthoritarian values drive voters to more carefully monitor and evaluate the electoral process. Instead, it leads to greater polarization between electoral winners and losers. We explain the result with reference to the motivated reasoning literature on biased information processing: While antiauthoritarian convictions lead people to obtain more information on the electoral process, their political leanings bias their reading of this information, which in effect leads to stronger polarization in perceptions.
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People's attitudes about Anthropogenic Climate Change (ACC) risks are not only influenced by scientific data, such as the likelihood of harm, the consequences of failing to act and the cost and effectiveness of mitigation. Instead, when people receive information about controversial topics of decision-relevant science like ACC they often defer to their political attitudes. Recent research has shown that more numerate people can be more polarized about these topics despite their better ability to interpret the scientific data. In this study, we investigated whether the motivated numeracy effect originally found by Kahan, Peters, Dawson, and Slovic [2017. Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government. Behavioural Public Policy, 1(1)] on the controversial topic of gun control laws in the United States also applies to people when assessing ACC risks. This randomized controlled experiment (N = 504) of Australian adults extends the motivated reasoning thesis by finding evidence that highly numerate people who receive scientific data about ACC use motivated numeracy to rationalize their interpretations in line with their attitudes. ; This work was supported by the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science
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In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 42, Heft 6, S. 1053-1069
ISSN: 1467-9221
Information processing during heated debates on asylum and immigration may often be influenced by prejudice rather than a desire to learn facts. In this article, we investigate how people process empirical evidence on the consequences of refugee arrivals through a novel survey experiment that disentangles politically motivated learning from other forms of learning and expressive responding. Specifically, we ask respondents to interpret a 2×2 table about the relationship between asylum seekers and crime rates. Crucially, respondents are randomly allocated to evaluate a conclusion that triggers their identity‐protective stakes or not. In addition, we test for motivated responding as an alternative explanation by randomly providing some respondents with a response format that motivates them to report their inference truthfully. We find that information processing changes substantially when new information challenges existing asylum attitudes. Politically motivated learning is strongest among voters with strong negative prior attitudes towards asylum seekers. Our results also indicate that expressive responding can only partially account for this gap in correctly reported inferences. Our research has important implications for research on the consequences of refugee migration, theories of motivated reasoning, and survey methodology.
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Social accountability reforms emphasize expanding performance information disclosure and incorporating citizen feedback into performance evaluations of public organizations. However, social accountability scholarship has largely ignored possible discriminatory implications of performance information use despite calls for more social equity research. We look to bridge these two literatures, arguing that increasing exposure to performance information can actually activate racial bias in citizen feedback. Using two samples of White MTurk participants residing in the United States, we test this argument in a Negative Performance Information Study (n = 800) and a Positive Performance Information Study (n = 800). In the Negative Performance Information Study, we find increased exposure to negative performance information triggers more negative performance evaluations of public organizations led by Black public managers, but not White public managers, and strengthens preferences to fire Black public managers, but not White public managers. In the Positive Performance Information Study, we find increased exposure to positive performance information has no impact on performance evaluations of Black, nor White public managers but strengthens preferences to reappoint White, but not Black public managers. These findings suggest increasing exposure to performance information triggers racial bias in performance evaluations and preferences for holding public managers accountable. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published
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In: Forthcoming at Political Behavior
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In: Political Behavior, 2019
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In: Political Behavior Vol. 37, Issue 2, pp 487-507, 2015
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In: APSA 2013 Annual Meeting Paper
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