The political polarization of COVID-19 treatments among physicians and laypeople in the United States

Abstract

In the United States, liberals and conservatives disagree about facts. To what extent does expertise attenuate these disagreements? To study this question, we compare the polarization of beliefs about COVID-19 treatments among laypeople and critical care physicians. We find that political ideology predicts both groups’ beliefs about a range of COVID-19 treatments. These associations persist after controlling for a rich set of covariates, including local politics. We study two potential explanations: a) that partisans are exposed to different information and b) that they interpret the same information in different ways, finding evidence for both. Polarization is driven by preferences for partisan cable news but not by exposure to scientific research. Using a set of embedded experiments, we demonstrate that partisans perceive scientific evidence differently when it pertains to a politicized treatment (ivermectin), relative to when the treatment is not identified. These results highlight the extent to which political ideology is increasingly relevant for understanding beliefs, even among expert decision makers such as physicians.

Misinformation, Trust, and Use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19

“…Similarly, other analyses showed that more politically conservative physicians were more likely to favor these interventions. 1 , 19 Our study extends these efforts in suggesting that patients’ views are associated with non–evidence-based prescriptions as well. Moreover, it is not solely partisan affiliation that matters.…”

Perceived Racial Threats Increase Demand for Conservative Media: Evidence from Black Lives Matter Protests and Fox News Ratings

“…Recent studies find that watching Fox News Channel (FNC), the highest rated cable news channel in the United States (US), affects viewers' attitudes and factual beliefs (Broockman and Kalla, 2022;Levin et al, 2023) and increases support for conservative ideology and vote share for Republican Party candidates (DellaVigna and Kaplan, 2007;Hopkins and Ladd, 2014;Martin and Yurukoglu, 2017;Galletta and Ash, Forthcoming). This research largely uses field and natural experiments exploiting variation in the availability of FNC to identify the consequences of consuming FNC.…”

“…Previous research has found that the content of conservative media focuses on threats that are likely to induce fear, anxiety, and outrage in viewers (e.g., increasing crime rates, rising racial diversity), arguing that this content drives higher ratings (Berry and Sobieraj, 2013;Klein, 2020;Confessore, 2022). This claim, however, is difficult to empirically verify because the content on FNC is both a cause and an effect of consumer demand (Levin et al, 2023). As a result, if the content of media like FNC reflects existing consumer demand for programming that invokes fear, anxiety, and outrage (Gentzkow and Shapiro, 2010;Kim, Lelkes and McCrain, 2022), we cannot infer from content alone that real-world events that feel threatening would increase demand for conservative partisan media, especially among those who are not already high consumers.…”

“…While some of this research shows that the protests had positive effects on racial justice outcomes, especially in terms perceptions of racial discrimination (Mutz, 2022) and public discourse (Dunivin et al, 2022), our work suggests that there may have been unintended and unwanted consequences. Namely, the protests increased Americans' viewership of conservative media, which, according to the scholarship on FNC's effects, may have led to a decrease in accurate factual beliefs (Broockman and Kalla, 2022;Levin et al, 2023), an increase in polarization and Republican vote share (DellaVigna and Kaplan, 2007;Hopkins and Ladd, 2014;Martin and Yurukoglu, 2017), and a rightward shift in policy (Galletta and Ash, Forthcoming).…”

Politicization Undermines Trust in Institutions, Even Among the Ideologically Aligned Public

“…One possible explanation is that institutions have become politicized, or at least appear to have become politicized. A recent analysis found that physicians' political ideology predicted their beliefs about the effectiveness of COVID-19 treatments 21 . Many scholars have contended that political values impact scienti c decision-making 22,23 , a concern shared by everyday people 24 .…”