Researchers have noted that an individual’s processing of political media messages occurs through various filters including partisanship, interest, and cynicism. The phenomenon of motivated processing, however, is understudied particularly in the context of televised presidential debates. As major campaign events, presidential debates have been linked to increases in viewers’ political knowledge, political information efficacy, and changes in candidate evaluation. Yet individual’s information processing, largely unexplored in the extant debate literature, may well influence these outcomes. In the present study, we manipulate processing of a political debate and monitor the effects through participant engagement with social media. Researchers asked debate viewers to tweet while watching 2016 Democrat and Republican presidential primary debates following instructions designed to prime either directional motivated processing or accuracy motivated processing. The results demonstrate that the accuracy prompt reduced issue-based tweeting and therefore reduced knowledge acquisition. Conversely, the directional prompt increased issue-based tweeting and therefore increased knowledge acquisition.
In this study, we assess the extent to which attending a candidate rally was associated with distrust of democratic institutions, epistemic rigidity, attribution of malevolent intentions to the political outgroup, and acceptance of political violence. Surveys ( N = 251) were distributed at rallies the night before and day of the 2016 Iowa Caucuses. Results suggest that attendees of rallies for Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump were more likely to distrust democracy relative to attendees of a Hillary Clinton or Ted Cruz rally. Findings also suggest that mistrust of democracy was associated with greater attribution of malevolence and acceptance of political violence. Attending a Sanders or Trump rally was indirectly associated with attribution of malevolence and acceptance of political violence through democratic mistrust.
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