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Political parties play a vital role in democracies by linking citizens to their representatives. Nonetheless, a longstanding concern is that partisan identification slants decision-making. Citizens may support (oppose) policies that they would otherwise oppose (support) in the absence of an endorsement from a political party-this is due in large part to what is called partisan motivated reasoning where individuals interpret information through the lens of their party commitment. We explore partisan motivated reasoning in a survey experiment focusing on support for an energy law. We identify two politically relevant factors that condition partisan motivated reasoning: (1) an explicit inducement to form an 'accurate' opinion, and (2) cross-partisan, but not consensus, bipartisan support for the law. We further provide evidence of how partisan motivated reasoning works psychologically and affects opinion strength. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for understanding opinion formation and the overall quality of citizens' opinions. Adapted from the source document.

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.

This study uses an experimental design to simulate the ballot counting process during a hand-recount after a disputed election. Applying psychological theories of motivated reasoning to the political process, we find that ballot counters' party identification conditionally influences their ballot counting decisions. Party identification's effect on motivated reasoning is greater when ballot counters are given ambiguous, versus specific, instructions for determining voter intent. This study's findings have major implications for ballot counting procedures throughout the United States and for the use of motivated reasoning in the political science literature. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractA large literature demonstrates that conservatives have greater needs for certainty than liberals. This suggests an asymmetry hypothesis: Conservatives are less open to new information that conflicts with their political identity and, in turn, political accountability will be lower on the right than the left. However, recent work suggests that liberals and conservatives are equally prone to politically motivated reasoning (PMR). The present article confronts this puzzle. First, we identify significant limitations of extant studies evaluating the asymmetry hypothesis and deploy two national survey experiments to address them. Second, we provide the first direct test of the key theoretical claim underpinning the asymmetry hypothesis: epistemic needs for certainty promote PMR. We find little evidence for the asymmetry hypothesis. Importantly, however, we also find no evidence that epistemic needs promote PMR. That is, although conservatives report greater needs for certainty than liberals, these needs are not a major source of political bias.