Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs

TLDR

The study proposes a model of motivated skepticism to explain why citizens act as biased information processors. The authors conduct two experiments testing how citizens evaluate arguments on affirmative action and gun control, revealing a prior attitude effect. The experiments show that citizens exhibit both confirmation and disconfirmation biases, which together drive attitude polarization—particularly among those with strong priors and high political sophistication—raising concerns for democratic rationality.

Abstract

We propose a model of motivated skepticism that helps explain when and why citizens are biased‐information processors. Two experimental studies explore how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, finding strong evidence of a prior attitude effect such that attitudinally congruent arguments are evaluated as stronger than attitudinally incongruent arguments. When reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias. We also find a confirmation bias—the seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self‐select the source of the arguments they read. Both the confirmation and disconfirmation biases lead to attitude polarization—the strengthening of t 2 over t 1 attitudes—especially among those with the strongest priors and highest levels of political sophistication. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings for rational behavior in a democracy.