IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/soceco/v96y2022ics2214804321001397.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Updating politicized beliefs: How motivated reasoning contributes to polarization

Author

Listed:
  • Su, Siyan

Abstract

This paper examines how the political significance of information can affect subjects’ perceived reliability of that information and their motivated belief updating. In this study, 1,222 subjects were randomly assigned to receive low-reliability, high-reliability, or ambiguous information about neutral and political questions. For each question, subjects were first asked to give a numerical estimate. After receiving new information, subjects had the opportunity to update their previous numerical estimates, and then, they reported their perceived reliability of the information they received. I observed that subjects were more reluctant to update their beliefs for politically significant questions compared to neutral questions. I also found that subjects were more likely to discredit and reject new information when it challenged their preexisting ideology, indicating that one’s rooted political beliefs can distort the belief updating process. In addition, subjects drew different conclusions from ambiguous information depending on their political ideology, illustrating how ambiguity may lead to greater polarization. Finally, I discuss possible explanations for subjects’ biased integration of new information using motivated reasoning and belief-based utility theories. The results of this study contribute to the understanding of why people remain divided on politically charged issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Su, Siyan, 2022. "Updating politicized beliefs: How motivated reasoning contributes to polarization," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:96:y:2022:i:c:s2214804321001397
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2021.101799
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214804321001397
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socec.2021.101799?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Philipp Harms & Matthew O. Jackson, 2013. "Updating Beliefs with Ambiguous Evidence: Implications for Polarization," NBER Working Papers 19114, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Li, Jing & Dow, William H & Kariv, Shachar, 2017. "Social preferences of future physicians," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt5vw9g5tj, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    3. ., 2017. "The future of capitalism," Chapters, in: Approaching Equality, chapter 2, pages 5-23, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    4. Markus M. Möbius & Muriel Niederle & Paul Niehaus & Tanya S. Rosenblat, 2022. "Managing Self-Confidence: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(11), pages 7793-7817, November.
    5. Stephan Lewandowsky & Gilles E. Gignac & Samuel Vaughan, 2013. "The pivotal role of perceived scientific consensus in acceptance of science," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 3(4), pages 399-404, April.
    6. Stigler, George J., 2011. "Economics of Information," Ekonomicheskaya Politika / Economic Policy, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, vol. 5, pages 35-49.
    7. Ivar Krumpal, 2013. "Determinants of social desirability bias in sensitive surveys: a literature review," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 47(4), pages 2025-2047, June.
    8. Lupton, Robert N. & Smallpage, Steven M. & Enders, Adam M., 2020. "Values and Political Predispositions in the Age of Polarization: Examining the Relationship between Partisanship and Ideology in the United States, 1988–2012," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 50(1), pages 241-260, January.
    9. Stuart J. Smyth & William A. Kerr & Peter W. B. Phillips, 2017. "Alternate Futures for Food Security," Natural Resource Management and Policy, in: Biotechnology Regulation and Trade, chapter 0, pages 263-271, Springer.
    10. Furnham, Adrian & Boo, Hua Chu, 2011. "A literature review of the anchoring effect," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 40(1), pages 35-42, February.
    11. Loewenstein, George, 1987. "Anticipation and the Valuation of Delayed Consumption," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 97(387), pages 666-684, September.
    12. Russell Golman & George Loewenstein & Karl Ove Moene & Luca Zarri, 2016. "The Preference for Belief Consonance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 30(3), pages 165-188, Summer.
    13. George Loewenstein & Andras Molnar, 2018. "The renaissance of belief-based utility in economics," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 2(3), pages 166-167, March.
    14. Peter Ping Li, 2017. "The time for transition: Future trust research," Journal of Trust Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(1), pages 1-14, January.
    15. Martin L. Weitzman, 2009. "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19, February.
    16. Barber, Michael & Pope, Jeremy C., 2019. "Does Party Trump Ideology? Disentangling Party and Ideology in America," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 38-54, February.
    17. Sanzidur Rahman & Mohammad Mizanul Haque Kazal & Ismat Ara Begum & Mohammad Jahangir Alam, 2017. "Exploring the Future Potential of Jute in Bangladesh," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 7(12), pages 1-16, November.
    18. Charles S. Taber & Milton Lodge, 2006. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(3), pages 755-769, July.
    19. Christian Beer & Ernest Gnan & Manuel Mayer & Martin Summer, 2017. "The financial system of the future," Monetary Policy & the Economy, Oesterreichische Nationalbank (Austrian Central Bank), issue 10, pages 34-42.
    20. ., 2017. "Future challenges for the welfare state," Chapters, in: Digitalization, Immigration and the Welfare State, chapter 7, pages 148-165, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    21. Dan M. Kahan & Hank Jenkins-Smith & Donald Braman, 2011. "Cultural cognition of scientific consensus," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(2), pages 147-174, February.
    22. Hongbin Li & Prashant Loyalka & Scott Rozelle & Binzhen Wu, 2017. "Human Capital and China's Future Growth," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 31(1), pages 25-48, Winter.
    23. Koehler, Jonathan J., 1993. "The Influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 28-55, October.
    24. Kuhn, Kristine M., 1997. "Communicating Uncertainty: Framing Effects on Responses to Vague Probabilities," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 55-83, July.
    25. ., 2017. "Opportunities and future directions," Chapters, in: An Autecological Theory of the Firm and its Environment, chapter 7, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    26. -, 2009. "The economics of climate change," Sede Subregional de la CEPAL para el Caribe (Estudios e Investigaciones) 38679, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    27. Russell Golman & David Hagmann & George Loewenstein, 2017. "Information Avoidance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(1), pages 96-135, March.
    28. ., 2017. "Preventing future crises," Chapters, in: Financial Crises, 1929 to the Present, Second Edition, chapter 10, pages 181-200, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Bertoli, Paola & Grembi, Veronica & Morelli, Massimo & Rosso, Anna Cecilia, 2023. "In medio stat virtus? Effective communication and preferences for redistribution in hard times," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 105-147.
    2. Aljoscha Minnich & Hauke Roggenkamp & Andreas Lange, 2023. "Ambiguity Attitudes and Surprises: Experimental Evidence on Communicating New Information within a Large Population Sample," CESifo Working Paper Series 10783, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boysen, Nils & Schwerdfeger, Stefan & Weidinger, Felix, 2018. "Scheduling last-mile deliveries with truck-based autonomous robots," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 271(3), pages 1085-1099.
    2. Lawrence C. Hamilton, 2016. "Public Awareness of the Scientific Consensus on Climate," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(4), pages 21582440166, November.
    3. Terrence Iverson & Scott Denning & Sammy Zahran, 2015. "When the long run matters," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 57-72, March.
    4. Edika Quispe-Torreblanca & John Gathergood & George Loewenstein & Neil Stewart, 2020. "Attention Utility: Evidence from Individual Investors," CESifo Working Paper Series 8091, CESifo.
    5. Lawrence C. Hamilton, 2018. "Self-assessed understanding of climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 151(2), pages 349-362, November.
    6. Toby Bolsen & James N. Druckman & Fay Lomax Cook, 2015. "Citizens’, Scientists’, and Policy Advisors’ Beliefs about Global Warming," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 658(1), pages 271-295, March.
    7. Sacha Altay & Marlène Schwartz & Anne-Sophie Hacquin & Aurélien Allard & Stefaan Blancke & Hugo Mercier, 2022. "Scaling up interactive argumentation by providing counterarguments with a chatbot," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(4), pages 579-592, April.
    8. Bolte, Lukas & Fan, Tony Q., 2024. "Motivated mislearning: The case of correlation neglect," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 217(C), pages 647-663.
    9. Adrian Vermeule, 2015. "Rationally Arbitrary Decisions in Administrative Law," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(S2), pages 475-507.
    10. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    11. Richard S. J. Tol & In Chang Hwang & Frédéric Reynès, 2012. "The Effect of Learning on Climate Policy under Fat-tailed Uncertainty," Working Paper Series 5312, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    12. Francesco Capozza & Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth & Johannes Wohlfart, 2021. "Studying Information Acquisition in the Field: A Practical Guide and Review," CEBI working paper series 21-15, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. The Center for Economic Behavior and Inequality (CEBI).
    13. Simon Levin & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2021. "On the Coevolution of Economic and Ecological Systems," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 355-377, October.
    14. Hahn Robert, 2010. "Designing Smarter Regulation with Improved Benefit-Cost Analysis," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-19, July.
    15. Bommier, Antoine & Lanz, Bruno & Zuber, Stéphane, 2015. "Models-as-usual for unusual risks? On the value of catastrophic climate change," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 1-22.
    16. Lamperti, Francesco & Bosetti, Valentina & Roventini, Andrea & Tavoni, Massimo & Treibich, Tania, 2021. "Three green financial policies to address climate risks," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    17. Matthew J. Holian & Matthew E. Kahn, 2014. "Household Demand for Low Carbon Public Policies: Evidence from California," NBER Working Papers 19965, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Steve Newbold & Charles Griffiths & Christopher C. Moore & Ann Wolverton & Elizabeth Kopits, 2010. "The "Social Cost of Carbon" Made Simple," NCEE Working Paper Series 201007, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Aug 2010.
    19. Kenneth Gillingham & William D. Nordhaus & David Anthoff & Geoffrey Blanford & Valentina Bosetti & Peter Christensen & Haewon McJeon & John Reilly & Paul Sztorc, 2015. "Modeling Uncertainty in Climate Change: A Multi-Model Comparison," NBER Working Papers 21637, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:soceco:v:96:y:2022:i:c:s2214804321001397. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620175 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.