The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion

Bolsen, Toby; Druckman, James N.; Cook, Fay Lomax

doi:10.1007/s11109-013-9238-0

Cited by 692 publications

(539 citation statements)

References 55 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

511

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In the domain of political decision-making, motivated reasoning is at play when voters support a policy if it is endorsed by their political party (Peterson et al 2013), even if they would otherwise oppose it (Bolsen, Druckman, and Cook 2014). Similarly, presenting voters with negative information about their preferred candidate gives rise to stronger, rather than weaker, support (Redlawsk 2002).…”

Section: Motivated Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to Climate Change Skepticism and the Ideological Divide

Santos¹,

Feygina²

2017

Michigan Journal of Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Climate change is an increasingly politicized issue in the United States, with many members of the American public, especially those who identify as politically conservative, skeptical about this dangerous phenomenon. A host of social and psychological processes have been investigated in an attempt to understand skepticism and resistance to responding to the threat of climate change, including motivated reasoning, system justification theory, social dominance orientation, belief in a just world, the cultural cognition thesis, and solution aversion. In this article, we review recent research into these processes and their implications for understanding the political divide in responding to climate change. We also highlight efforts to test communications interventions aimed at ameliorating these processes underlying climate change skepticism, including framing and scientific consensus. This literature review may be informative for climate change focused communicators, policymakers, practitioners, and academics who directly or indirectly interact with the 6

show abstract

Section: Motivated Reasoningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Responding to Climate Change Skepticism and the Ideological Divide

Santos¹,

Feygina²

2017

Michigan Journal of Sustainability

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…When elites are in agreement on an issue, the research shows that politically aware members of the public uniformly move in the direction argued for by political leaders. When political elites present conflicting messages on an issue, however, the opinions of the most politically aware members of the public (e.g., those most likely to receive the conflicting messages) reflect only the declarations of the political elites who most clearly reflect the partisan, ideological, or racial identity of the individual in question (Arceneaux 2008;Bolsen, Druckman, and Cook 2014;Domke et al 2000;Druckman et al 2013;Goren, Frederico, and Kittilson 2009;Hurley 1994, 1996;Lavine, Johnston, and Steenbergen 2012;Taber and Lodge 2006). In other words, elite opinion theory works best when characteristics of the audience, the elite communicators, and the message are considered together.…”

Section: Elite Rhetoric and Public Opinionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bolstered by the increasingly large body of research into partisan-motivated reasoning, recent scholarship on elite opinion leadership has extended Zaller's work and further examined the impact of elite cues on the direction and magnitude of opinion change (Arceneaux 2008;Bolsen, Druckman, and Cook 2014;Druckman, Peterson, and Slothuus 2013;Goren, Frederico, and Kittilson 2009;Lavine, Johnston, and Steenbergen 2012;Taber and Lodge 2006). These studies have concluded that exposure to appeals delivered by elites who share a respondent's partisan identity are far more influential than appeals delivered by elites representing the opposing party and appeals delivered by a neutral, non-partisan source.…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race, partisanship, and perceptions of inter-minority commonality

Wallsten

Nteta

2016

Politics, Groups, and Identities

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Feelings of commonality are central to the formation of multiracial political coalitions. Despite a fairly voluminous literature on where these feelings come from, however, relatively little is known about how elite messages influence individual-level perceptions of intergroup relations. This oversight is surprising given that socalled "elite opinion" theory has become "virtually orthodoxy" within political science. In order to explore the potential for opinion leadership on perceptions of commonality, this paper employs a survey experiment embedded in the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Testing hypotheses derived from elite opinion theory, this paper finds that no one interpretation of elite opinion theory can fully account for perceptions of commonality across racial groups. Scholars of race and ethnic politics would do well in the future, therefore, to acknowledge the complex ways that racial and partisan characteristics condition an individual's response to elite messages.

show abstract

“…This study therefore presents a strong test of the idea that it truly is salient national norms and not partisan norms to which participants are responding (cf. Bolsen, Druckman, & Cook, 2014;Leeper & Slothuus, 2014). …”

Section: Summary and Next Stepsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Going along versus getting it right: The role of self-integrity in political conformity

Binning

Brick

Cohen

et al. 2015

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

People often conform to the opinions of ingroup members, even when available evidence suggests the group is misinformed. Following insights from the social identity approach and selfaffirmation theory, it was hypothesized that people conform to salient opinions in an effort to maintain global self-integrity. In a series of experiments examining Americans' approval of President Obama and his policies, approval was consistently swayed by normative information (national polling data) but not by evidentiary information (indicators of national economic health), except under theory-predicted conditions. When participants had satisfied their sense of self-integrity with a self-affirmation exercise (Democrats in Study 1, Republicans in Study 2), or when they had low levels of American identification and thus were less concerned with national norms (Democrats and Republicans in Study 3), they showed the opposite pattern and were swayed by evidence in spite of contradicting normative information. The extent to which people are influenced by norms versus evidence in political judgment is shaped by social identity, one aspect of self-integrity. The results highlight a social psychological means to attenuate and potentially reverse conformity in the face of contradicting evidence, a finding with both practical and theoretical implications.

show abstract

The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion

Cited by 692 publications

References 55 publications

Responding to Climate Change Skepticism and the Ideological Divide

Responding to Climate Change Skepticism and the Ideological Divide

Race, partisanship, and perceptions of inter-minority commonality

Going along versus getting it right: The role of self-integrity in political conformity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About