Three Steps toward a Theory of Motivated Political Reasoning

Lodge, Milton; Taber, Charles S.

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511805813.009

Cited by 442 publications

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“…The results reported in this paper also speak to an important question about ''motivated reasoning'' (Lodge and Taber 2000;Taber et al 2001;Taber and Lodge 2006). Previous work emphasizes how having a psychological stake in an attitude can lead an individual to distort new information to make it consonant with a preexisting attitude, be that attitude about partisanship or policy.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 54%

“…Studies of partisanship and social networks show that people are more likely to discuss politics with those who share their partisanship (Huckfeldt et al 2004;Mutz 2006). 4 In addition, work on information processing and ''motivated reasoning'' shows that people pay more attention to information that supports their views, they attach more weight to information that supports their views, they more easily accept information that is consistent with their preexisting views, they expend more cognitive effort to disconfirm information inconsistent with their preexisting views, and they construe the implications of the information in ways that are consistent with their preexisting views (Lodge and Taber 2000;Taber et al 2001;Taber and Lodge 2006;Gaines et al 2007). One implication of ''selective exposure'' and ''motivated reasoning'' is that people may not update their evaluations of the president in the uniform way implied by Eq.…”

Section: Dynamic Accounts Of Presidential Evaluationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The early Columbia studies established that through their decisions and social networks people are selectively exposed to political information that is likely to accord with their partisan inclinations (Lazarsfeld et al 1948;Berelson et al 1954). Recent research focuses on ''motivated reasoning'' to explain how people process the information to which they are exposed and identifies a variety of mechanisms by which people may arrive at different assessments even when exposed to identical information (Lodge and Taber 2000). The work on motivated reasoning provides the causal underpinning for the famous observation by Stokes (1966) about the ''subtle processes of perceptual adjustment by which the individual assembles an image of current politics consistent with his partisan allegiance' ' (p. 127).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Updating Political Evaluations: Policy Attitudes, Partisanship, and Presidential Assessments

Highton

2011

Polit Behav

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The pervasive influence of partisanship on political evaluations is well known and understood. Whether citizens rely on their policy attitudes has received less attention, especially in the context of how people update and revise their evaluations. This paper focuses on presidential assessments and uses panel data covering three presidencies to model the determinants of opinion change. The results indicate that policy preferences (like partisanship) exert a regular and substantial influence on how citizens update their presidential evaluations.Keywords Issues Á Policy preferences Á Presidential approval Á Partisanship Á Party identification Á Updating In politics, citizens rarely act immediately upon forming their opinions about candidates for elective office. Political campaigns extend over time, offering ample opportunities for people to update and revise their opinions. Candidates, once elected, typically serve over a period of years before facing the electorate to seek reelection. Thus how people update and revise their evaluations of elected officials is important for understanding the nature of democratic accountability. This paper focuses on the process by which ordinary citizens update their presidential assessments. Most previous research on presidential evaluations focuses on either the dynamics of aggregate presidential approval or cross-sectional

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Dynamic Accounts Of Presidential Evaluationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Updating Political Evaluations: Policy Attitudes, Partisanship, and Presidential Assessments

Highton

2011

Polit Behav

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“…who exhibit predictable biases in managing information. Strong beliefs often lead to biased memory searches, biased choice of inferential heuristics, and a predisposition to judge arguments supporting existing beliefs to be accurate and to discount contrary arguments (Kunda 1999;Lodge and Taber 2000;Redlawsk 2002). …”

Section: Theorymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Strong beliefs often lead to biased memory searches, biased choice of inferential heuristics, and a predisposition to judge arguments supporting existing beliefs to be accurate and to discount contrary arguments (Kunda 1999;Lodge and Taber 2000;Redlawsk 2002). More recent research by Westen et al (2006) at Emory University used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to show that when partisans were presented with information threatening their beliefs about their preferred candidate or an opposition candidate, they reached biased conclusions, with the fMRI showing their effort to reach an ''emotionally stable judgment'' through confirmation bias to have involved primarily the part of the brain associated with processing emotions.…”

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confidence: 99%

What's Good for the Goose is Bad for the Gander: Negative Political Advertising, Partisanship, and Turnout

Stevens

Sullivan

Allen

et al. 2008

The Journal of Politics

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This study examines citizens' perceptions of fairness and legitimacy in political advertising. Using focus groups, an original national survey, and data on election 2000, as well as drawing on results from a replication of the national survey in 2004, we characterize political ads from the citizen's perspective. We then turn to the impact of ''negative'' advertising on voter turnout. Like several studies, we find circumstances under which turnout can be increased by negative ad criticisms. However, we show that this general result is only part of the story. Drawing on research in political psychology, we suggest that voters are ''motivated processors'' of advertising claims; as such, they evaluate the fairness of an ad according to their partisan predispositions. We show that when partisans perceive the criticisms of their own party's candidate to be fair, they are less likely to say they will vote. As a result, we find that negative advertising not only may affect the total turnout in an election but also has an important and varying impact on the composition of the electorate.H ow does ''negative'' campaign advertising affect the American electorate? In recent years the impact of negative ads has been the subject of a great debate fueled by diverse methodologies and equally diverse answers. Political scientists and pundits have been especially alarmed by suggestions that negative ads may affect partisans and independents differently, depressing turnout for the latter, while stimulating turnout of the former. Concerns about the influence of political advertising, including misgivings about the increase and impact of negative campaign ads, are a subset of two more general issues confronting the American polity: worries about declining participation in elections and the prospect of an increasingly polarized electorate. Given perceptions of the high stakes and close contests of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the precise composition of the electorate at the polls is also of critical interest. Our research offers new evidence about how voters characterize ''negative'' or ''attack'' ads and, in light of these characterizations, how negative ads affect electoral participation, polarization, and composition. We demonstrate that voters' partisanship substantially colors perceptions of legitimate negativity in advertising and that these characterizations in turn affect who goes to the polls. As a consequence, some negative advertising campaigns may stimulate while others depress overall turnout, but more than the total turnout is at stake. Negative advertising also affects the composition of the electorate since partisans and independents experience an advertising stimulus (or deterrent) differently.Electoral campaigns are increasingly ''going negative'' as Geer (2006), among others, has documented. In the decade since Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) published findings showing that negative advertising depressed voter turnout, especially among Independents, other scholars have criticized their methodology (Bar...

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2016

Political Attitudes

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Three Steps toward a Theory of Motivated Political Reasoning

Cited by 442 publications

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Updating Political Evaluations: Policy Attitudes, Partisanship, and Presidential Assessments

Updating Political Evaluations: Policy Attitudes, Partisanship, and Presidential Assessments

What's Good for the Goose is Bad for the Gander: Negative Political Advertising, Partisanship, and Turnout

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