Good News is Not a Sufficient Condition for Motivated Reasoning
In: CESifo Working Paper No. 10915
In: CESifo Working Paper No. 10915
SSRN
In: Political behavior
ISSN: 1573-6687
AbstractShould immigrants have the same access to welfare as the native population? Fuelled by the populist radical right, the notion of restricting access to benefits to native citizens – welfare chauvinism – has been increasingly prominent in political debates. But can welfare chauvinistic attitudes be induced (or attenuated) by the negative (or positive) information individuals receive about immigrants? Combining insights from research on negativity bias and motivated reasoning, we argue that negative frames which emphasize fiscal costs of immigration are more consequential than positive frames that emphasize fiscal benefits, but this effect is primarily visible among those whose ideological priors are congruent with the negative information. Since more extreme attitudes are associated with increased selective judgement, those who occupy a more extreme ideological position should be particularly affected. A survey experiment in Germany supports this argument and shows that while a negative frame is stronger than a positive frame, this effect is moderated by one's ideology and is most evident among more extreme ideologues who hold frame-congruent attitudes. We also show that ideology, rather than economic circumstances, is a more important moderator of framing effects.
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Working paper
In: The American review of public administration: ARPA
ISSN: 1552-3357
Despite being touted as a game-changing technology, studies on the influence of body-worn cameras (BWCs) on policing outcomes have produced mixed results, with the underlying reasons for such findings unclear. Drawing on the sociology of culture and organizational theory, we argue that BWCs often have mixed impacts due to deeply ingrained, valued occupational assumptions and practices shaped by the structural and organizational context. These assumptions and practices, collectively known as the police métier, are not politically neutral and can lead to motivated decisions rather than accurate ones. We suggest that such motivated reasoning can be mitigated by changing the structural or organizational context, such as establishing a citizen oversight agency (COA), which could decrease racial disparities in policing outcomes. To test these arguments, we examined the impact of BWCs on racial disparities in two types of policing outcomes: police homicides of citizens and disorderly conduct arrests (DCAs). Our findings indicate that while the adoption of BWCs does not impact racial disparities in DCAs or police homicides of citizens, there is a significant decrease in racial disparity in DCAs when BWCs and COAs are used in conjunction. Additionally, while the racial disparity in police homicides of Blacks and Whites does not decrease when BWCs and COAs are used together, there is an overall decrease in police homicides across both racial groups. Overall, our study demonstrates that technology's impact on bureaucratic performance is influenced by occupational assumptions and practices, which can be altered by external accountability mechanisms such as COAs.
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology
ISSN: 1467-9221
AbstractWhat emotions do affectively polarized individuals report, and how? While affect is a broad term, research suggests that different emotions predict distinct political behaviors. Therefore, it is vital to understand what emotions partisans report. However, as research on motivated reasoning suggests that people process information consistent with their partisan mind, I argue that they may not necessarily report the emotions they feel. Instead, they may ascribe normatively desirable emotions to their ingroup and normatively undesirable emotions to opposing outgroups. Doing so makes their ingroup distinct from and superior to outgroups. This article develops and showcases this argument. I analyze data in which affective polarization was likely high—interviews with radical‐right voters conducted before a major election—to illustrate what emotions partisans report and how. The discussion invites future research to test how affective polarization correlates with single emotions and whether partisans strengthen polarization by how they talk about emotions.
In: Political studies: the journal of the Political Studies Association of the United Kingdom
ISSN: 1467-9248
In a backsliding democracy, antidemocratic politicians often vilify nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and impose restrictions that make it harder for them to form, advocate, or obtain funding. Do citizens consider NGOs as a threat? Do they support regulatory measures to restrict NGO activities? We focus on two factors that may influence citizens' attitudes toward NGOs: these groups' reliance on foreign funding and their ideological leaning. In a preregistered survey experiment in Israel, we find that citizens perceive foreign-funded NGOs as slightly more threatening, but they are not more likely to support restrictions on these groups than on groups relying on local funding. The ideological bent of the NGOs has a much stronger effect: People perceive NGOs on the other side of the political aisle as more threatening and support restrictions on their activity. Antidemocratic leaders might exploit this type of partisan-motivated reasoning to silence civil society.
In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology
ISSN: 1467-9221
AbstractIn this two‐wave longitudinal study, we examined the sense of symbolic threat from the West and Russia as ideological roots of motivated belief in pro‐Kremlin conspiracy theories and the attribution of blame to Russia, the United States, and Ukraine for the war in Ukraine. Participants (N = 690) completed questionnaires on symbolic threat from the West and Russia, belief in pro‐Kremlin conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine as well as generic anti‐West and anti‐Russian conspiracy theories, and blame for the war in Ukraine. The sense of symbolic threat from the West and pro‐Kremlin conspiracy beliefs predicted each other in time and were substantially associated with increased blaming of Ukraine and the United States for the war in Ukraine. Conversely, symbolic threat from Russia along with the rejection of pro‐Kremlin conspiracy theories predicted increased blaming of Russia over time. Motivated reasoning analyses suggested that the ideological link between the symbolic threat from the West and belief in anti‐West conspiracy theories was stronger than the one between symbolic threat from Russia and belief in anti‐Russian conspiracy theories. This suggests an existence of self‐reinforcing relationship between the deep‐rooted sense of symbolic threat and anti‐West conspiracy theories which is exploited by various political actors.
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Working paper
In: Forthcoming, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.
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In: Public administration: an international journal, Band 102, Heft 1, S. 318-340
ISSN: 1467-9299
AbstractDespite a growing number of studies on how prior beliefs distort citizens' interpretation of performance information for service providers, little is known about whether prior beliefs matter equally across different services and types of providers. In this study, we provide a wide replication and extension of the experimental design used in Baekgaard and Serritzlew (2016) with three types of providers (public, non‐profit, and for‐profit) across two services (nursing homes and refuse collection). Based on two large‐N nationally representative experiments (N = 3018 and N = 3020), we find that citizens' sector preference does indeed impact their interpretation of performance information, corresponding to the original study. However, public sector preference plays a substantially different role in the two services. Our findings strengthen the external validity of previous research and simultaneously identify theoretical boundaries to its application across various services and providers. This, we argue, underlines the importance of replicating and extending pivotal studies on performance information.
In: PLOS ONE
How does the public assess the Supreme Court and its work? Using data from three surveys conducted over a span of ten years, we show that individuals' policy preferences drive evaluations of the Court and its willingness to reform the Court. We find strong evidence that the Court's hybrid legal-political nature enables a unique form of policy-motivated reasoning: respondents who agree with Court outputs view the Court and its work as more "legal" in nature, while those who disagree view both as more "political." Our findings stand in contrast to longstanding views in the literature that the public views the Court as a fundamentally different sort of institution that stands largely separate from politics. The fact that policy attitudes powerfully inform the public's assessment of the Court has crucial implications for the ongoing debates over Supreme Court power.
In: American journal of political science, Band 68, Heft 1, S. 5-23
ISSN: 1540-5907
AbstractContemporary American politics has been largely characterized by hyperpartisanship and polarization, with partisan‐motivated reasoning a thematic concern. Theories of emotions in politics suggest that anxiety might interrupt partisan heuristics and encourage citizens to reason more evenhandedly—but in what domains and to what extent? We use original panel data to assess how anxiety about becoming seriously ill from COVID‐19 interacted with partisan attachments to shape political judgment during the COVID‐19 pandemic. The structure of our data allows us to assess large‐scale implications of politically relevant emotions in ways that so far have not been possible. We find large effects on policy attitudes: Republicans who were afraid of getting sick rejected signals from copartisan leaders by supporting mask mandates and the like. Effects on vote choice for Republicans were muted in comparison, but fear's large effect on independents may have been pivotal.
In: International journal of public opinion research, Band 35, Heft 2
ISSN: 1471-6909
Abstract
This study examined the effectiveness of fact-checking in reducing misperceptions held by people of two opposing camps in the Anti-Extradition Bill Movement in Hong Kong. The experimental design mirrored the political rhetoric in the city's media and exposed participants to erroneous information in news reports that cast protesters in a negative light or accused the police unfoundedly. We found that directional motivation persistently exerted a profound influence on people's acceptance of misinformation. Exposure to fact-checks was found to have limited effects in combating the influence of misinformation and mitigating social division. The effects were contingent on the audiences' attitude strength and fact-checkers. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of fact-checking is subject to the political and media contexts in which misinformation and fact-checks are circulated as well as the implications of those contexts on people's trust in fact-checks.
In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Band 217
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In: Political psychology: journal of the International Society of Political Psychology, Band 44, Heft 4, S. 729-747
ISSN: 1467-9221
In this study, we investigate how partisan motivations shape voters' reactions to a political scandal by drawing on a unique survey experiment fielded immediately after Justin Trudeau's brownface/blackface scandal broke during the 2019 Canadian election. We thus explore motivated reasoning in real time in a competitive and highly partisan election context. Are voters more willing to forgive politicians for past behavior when their own party leader's impropriety is cued? To what extent do personal interests, such as cross‐pressures or electoral concerns, affect the motivation to forgive? Our findings show that partisan‐motivated reasoning is overwhelmingly powerful, producing politically biased judgments of politicians implicated in scandals. Furthermore, voters' willingness to forgive scandals is also influenced by "strategic" considerations, in that preferences over which political party wins or loses in the election affect opinions about whether someone should be forgiven or whether the scandal is considered important at all. However, we find no evidence that personal involvement in the issue raised by the scandal conditions partisan motivations. We posit that the environment—in this case, a competitive election—is an important consideration for understanding the extent and limits of partisan‐motivated reasoning.