IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/rpxmxx/v27y2025i4p1089-1115.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public officials’ motivated reasoning and their interpretation of policy information

Author

Listed:
  • Koen Migchelbrink
  • Pieter Raymaekers
  • Valérie Pattyn
  • Peter De Smedt

Abstract

Evidence based policy making is premised on the idea that policymakers use policy information in an accurate and unbiased way. However, the interpretation and application of policy information is a cognitive process open to misinterpretation and bias, especially in politically salient policy environments. In this generalization and extension replication, we conduct two randomized survey experiments to test the effects of motivated reasoning and political salience on public officials’ ability to accurately interpret policy information. The results indicate limited support for motivated reasoning, and we find no evidence suggesting that political salience affects officials’ accurate and unbiased interpretation of policy information.

Suggested Citation

  • Koen Migchelbrink & Pieter Raymaekers & Valérie Pattyn & Peter De Smedt, 2025. "Public officials’ motivated reasoning and their interpretation of policy information," Public Management Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(4), pages 1089-1115, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:rpxmxx:v:27:y:2025:i:4:p:1089-1115
    DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2024.2387178
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14719037.2024.2387178
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/14719037.2024.2387178?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.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:taf:rpxmxx:v:27:y:2025:i:4:p:1089-1115. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/rpxm .

    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.