COVID-19 and Politically Motivated Reasoning

Abstract

Background During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world witnessed a partisan segregation of beliefs toward the global health crisis and its management. Politically motivated reasoning, the tendency to interpret information in accordance with individual motives to protect valued beliefs rather than objectively considering the facts, could represent a key process involved in the polarization of attitudes. The objective of this study was to explore politically motivated reasoning when participants assess information regarding COVID-19. Design We carried out a preregistered online experiment using a diverse sample ( N = 1500) from the United States. Both Republicans and Democrats assessed the same COVID-19–related information about the health effects of lockdowns, social distancing, vaccination, hydroxychloroquine, and wearing face masks. Results At odds with our prestated hypothesis, we found no evidence in line with politically motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about COVID-19. Moreover, we found no evidence supporting the idea that numeric ability or cognitive sophistication bolster politically motivated reasoning in the case of COVID-19. Instead, our findings suggest that participants base their assessment on prior beliefs of the matter. Conclusions Our findings suggest that politically polarized attitudes toward COVID-19 are more likely to be driven by lack of reasoning than politically motivated reasoning—a finding that opens potential avenues for combating political polarization about important health care topics. Highlights Participants assessed numerical information regarding the effect of different COVID-19 policies. We found no evidence in line with politically motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about COVID-19. Participants tend to base their assessment of COVID-19–related facts on prior beliefs of the matter. Politically polarized attitudes toward COVID-19 are more a result of lack of thinking than partisanship.

Numeracy does not polarize climate change judgments: Numerate people are more knowledgeable and knowledge is power.

“…Again, potential interaction effects between statistical numeracy and cultural worldview variables were extensively investigated using multiple regression analyses and other modeling and extreme group approaches. All analyses again indicated that interaction effects were consistently unreliable in accordance with Study 1 and the growing literature documenting multiple failures to replicate previously reported evidence of polarization (Ballarini & Sloman, 2017; Maguire et al, 2022; Persson et al, 2021; Shoots-Reinhard et al, 2021; see for results)…”

“…In contrast, there is good reason to generally expect to find the opposite. For example, the estimated unique association between numeracy and accurate climate change knowledge in the present set of studies was roughly 3 times larger than the estimated magnitude of the unreplicated polarization effect between numeracy and subjective attitudes that was observed in a small subsample of participants in prior research (Kahan et al, 2012; also see Ballarini & Sloman, 2017;Maguire et al, 2022;Persson et al, 2021;Stagnaro et al, 2023, for failure of replications; see Supplemental Material S8 for effect size comparisons). To the extent, the current findings generalize, numeracy can be expected to predict people's independent acquisition of more accurate knowledge about most risks in general, including controversial risks.…”

“…For example, failure to address climate change can rationally imply a somewhat greater subjective risk for egalitarians than for individualists because climate change will likely entail somewhat greater costs for people who assume more responsibility to help protect others (e.g., egalitarians), as compared to those who do not (e.g., individualists). It also seems noteworthy that similar conceptual replication efforts in other controversial domains have failed to find evidence of increased bias or polarization as a function of numeracy and instead have found that numeracy tends to be associated with better understanding and reduced bias (e.g., Ballarini & Sloman, 2017; Maguire et al, 2022; Persson et al, 2021; but also see Fischer et al, 2022; Pennycook et al, 2023; Pröpper et al, 2022, for failures to conceptually replicate polarizing roles of science literacy and scientific beliefs).…”

Motivated Reasoning and Its Applications to Life

“…that 5G networks were spreading the coronavirus, that injecting or ingesting bleach was a safe way to kill the coronavirus, and that the flu shot provides immunity to COVID-19 (Pickles et al, 2021). And while a recent study has shown there to be little correlation between political affiliation and interpretation of COVID-19 data, suggesting a lack of politically motivated reasoning in areas pertaining to health, it nonetheless found that individuals' attitudes towards COVID-19 were influenced by their prior beliefs (Maguire et al, 2022). There are both positives and negatives to these findings.…”

No association between numerical ability and politically motivated reasoning in a large US probability sample

“…Beyond this conceptual issue, the replicability and generalizability of the key finding itself are unclear. While one independent team replicated the finding in an Australian sample ( 5 ), numerous others have failed to replicate it ( 6 – 11 ), and still others have found mixed results ( 12 – 14 ). Thus, the robustness of this central piece of evidence for MS2R is unclear.…”