Othello: New Perspectives.

Political cognition and its normative implications for the "democratic experiment": Theory, evidence, and controversy.

“…Liu and Ditto (2013) found that conservatives are more likely than liberals to distort facts to justify their own moral intuitions. In addition, conservatives are more likely than liberals to exhibit motivated skepticism (Feygina, Jost, & Goldsmith, 2010;MacCoun & Paletz, 2009) and backlash effects (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010) and to endorse false political and economic beliefs (Bartels, 2008;Kessler, 2010;Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2003;McCright & Dunlap, 2011; but see Bartels, 2002). Consistent with the notion that political sophistication sometimes exacerbates motivated reasoning, a few studies have suggested that conservatives who are highly educated and involved are especially likely to display information processing biases and to embrace political rumors and misconceptions (Bartels, 2008;Berinsky, 2011;Kahan, Jenkins-Smith, & Braman, 2011).…”

“…First, we discuss whether and how political sophistication or expertise influences the likelihood that citizens will think both deeply and objectively about their political options. Although expertise facilitates political understanding, it can also make it easier for citizens to defend their political attitudes through motivated forms of reasoning (Bartels, 2008;Duch, Palmer, & Anderson, 2000;Gaines, Kuklinski, Quirk, Peyton, & Verkuilen, 2007;Jacobson, 2010;Mercier & Sperber, 2011;Taber & Lodge, 2006;Wells, Reedy, Gastil, & Lee, 2009). Second, we consider the possibility that elites and citizens have become more politically polarized-with liberals taking more left-of-center positions on policy issues and conservatives taking more right-of-center positions-over the past several decades (see Abramowitz, 2010;Fiorina, Abrams, & Pope, 2010;Krochik & Jost, 2010;Levendusky, 2009;McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006), and ask whether and how a more ideologically polarized environment has affected political cognition.…”

“…Hypothesis-confirming biases and other belief distortions are especially pervasive when the state of the informational environment is ambiguous and can reasonably be construed in different ways (Bodenhausen, 1988;Chaiken & Maheswaran, 1994;Darley & Gross, 1983). Moreover, biases in political perception and judgment are apparently not distributed evenly throughout the population but may be stronger for those who are more ideologically interested, committed, and sophisticated (Bartels, 2008;Duch et al, 2000;Evans & Andersen, 2006;Taber & Lodge, 2006; but see Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2009). The fact that biased assimilation is often more common for those who are more politically involved and knowledgeable suggests that some false beliefs do not simply reflect suboptimal attempts to acquire accurate knowledge (e.g., deficits in information processing ability) but are due instead to motivational processes, including the desire to defend or justify one' s ideological commitments.…”

“…In the Iyengar and Hahn (2009) selective exposure study discussed earlier-in which participants were asked to indicate which of four news reports (Fox News, NPR, CNN, or the BBC) they would like to read-partisan bias was observed only for those respondents who possessed a strong interest in politics. A number of studies have suggested that political sophistication facilitates the distortion of facts among partisan ideologues (Achen & Bartels, 2006;Bartels, 2008;Duch et al, 2000;Evans & Andersen, 2006;Gaines et al, 2007;Haider-Markel & Joslyn, 2009;Jacobson, 2010;Lavine et al, 2012;Taber & Lodge, 2006;Wells et al, 2009). Thus, the normative implications of political sophistication are complex: Knowledge and interest increase citizens' responsiveness to diagnostic information, but they also increase the capacity to exercise motivated reasoning.…”