We combine a simple theoretical framework with a survey experiment to investigate how individuals sort fact from fiction and update their assessments in societally important but politicized topics, such as climate change and public health. We show that cognitive ability improves news discernment and in particular, the ability to make correct assessments that contradict one’s prior issue positions. However, when we disaggregate results by topic, higher cognitive ability sometimes amplifies motivated decision-making rather than attenuating it. Our framework and findings suggest a hard–easy pattern: more complex issues elicit greater motivated reasoning; simpler ones elicit less. In addition, overconfidence reduces responsiveness to new information, contributing to the persistence of misperceptions. Higher institutional trust appears to weaken motivated reasoning, suggesting that institutional quality may play an important role in constraining opinion polarization.
Omnibus bills often emerge from cross-party collaboration, bundling diverse programs to serve different constituencies. How people evaluate these complex policies remains an open question. We argue that individuals rely on an average-person heuristic, a group-based cognitive shortcut that simplifies policy evaluation...
S. Ansolabehere, Kattalina M. Berriochoa· Journal of Public Policy· 0 citations
Venue prestige and citation counts are two widely used, albeit imperfect, signals of research quality. When the two signals conflict, evaluators must decide how much weight to assign each. Yet, it remains unknown how researchers across disciplines trade off these two signals when evaluating research outcome. To fill th...
Fengyuan Michael Liu, Hazem Ibrahim, Yasir Zaki et al.· 0 citations
We study how both
who
we talk about when we talk about inequality and
how
we talk about it shape redistributive preferences. In a nationally representative survey experiment in Germany with a 1‐year follow‐up, we exogenously vary the focus of attention (top 10% vs. bottom 10%) and the mode of delivery (subtle p...
L. Bellani, Nona Bledow· Oxford Bulletin of Economics...· 0 citations
What types of motives trigger politically motivated reasoning? In two large-scale experiments (total
N
= 5,403) involving four contentious political issues, we investigated two psychological mechanisms that could trigger biased reasoning and attitude polarization: (1) epistemic motives to reduce uncertainty, manipu...
Davide Morisi, Jakob Bøggild Johannsen, John T. Jost· American Politics Research· 0 citations
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