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Money, Time, and Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Quick Recall and Political Learning Skills

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  • Markus Prior
  • Arthur Lupia

Abstract

Surveys provide widely cited measures of political knowledge. Do seemingly arbitrary features of survey interviews affect their validity? Our answer comes from experiments embedded in a representative survey of over 1200 Americans. A control group was asked political knowledge questions in a typical survey context. Treatment groups received the questions in altered contexts. One group received a monetary incentive for answering the questions correctly. Another was given extra time. The treatments increase the number of correct answers by 11–24%. Our findings imply that conventional knowledge measures confound respondents' recall of political facts with variation in their motivation to exert effort during survey interviews. Our work also suggests that existing measures fail to capture relevant political search skills and, hence, provide unreliable assessments of what many citizens know when they make political decisions. As a result, existing knowledge measures likely underestimate people's capacities for informed decision making.

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  • Markus Prior & Arthur Lupia, 2008. "Money, Time, and Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Quick Recall and Political Learning Skills," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(1), pages 169-183, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:52:y:2008:i:1:p:169-183
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5907.2007.00306.x
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    Cited by:

    1. Ben Baumberg Geiger, 2016. "Benefit ‘myths’? The accuracy and inaccuracy of public beliefs about the benefits system," CASE Papers /199, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    2. Barry C. BURDEN & ONO Yoshikuni, 2020. "Ignorance is Bliss? Age, Misinformation, and Support for Women's Representation," Discussion papers 20066, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    3. Erik Peterson & Shanto Iyengar, 2021. "Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 133-147, January.
    4. Ariel Malka & Jon A. Krosnick & Gary Langer, 2009. "The Association of Knowledge with Concern About Global Warming: Trusted Information Sources Shape Public Thinking," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 29(5), pages 633-647, May.
    5. Carsten Jensen & Jens Thomsen, 2014. "Self-reported cheating in web surveys on political knowledge," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 48(6), pages 3343-3354, November.
    6. David Fortunato & Matthew V. Hibbing & Tessa Provins, 2022. "Hurdles to inference: The demographic correlates of survey breakoff and shirking," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(2), pages 455-465, March.
    7. Sergio Splendore & Diego Garusi & Augusto Valeriani, 2024. "A Deliberative Democracy Framework for Analysing Trust in Journalists: An Application to Italy," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 12.
    8. Tobias Gummer & Tanja Kunz, 2022. "Relying on External Information Sources When Answering Knowledge Questions in Web Surveys," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 51(2), pages 816-836, May.
    9. Brad R. Taylor, 2020. "The psychological foundations of rational ignorance: biased heuristics and decision costs," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 70-88, March.
    10. Banuri, Sheheryar & Keefer, Philip, 2016. "Pro-social motivation, effort and the call to public service," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 139-164.
    11. Michaël Aklin & Patrick Bayer & S. Harish & Johannes Urpelainen, 2014. "Information and energy policy preferences: a survey experiment on public opinion about electricity pricing reform in rural India," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 305-327, November.

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