What Motivates Reasoning? A Theory of Goal-Dependent Political Evaluation

Rather than exhibiting bias or open-minded reasoning at baseline, we argue that information processing is motivated by whatever goals a context makes salient. Thus, if politics feels like debate, people will be motivated to argue for their side. If politics feels like deliberation, they will be moti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:American journal of political science 2021-01, Vol.65 (1), p.180-196
Main Authors: Groenendyk, Eric, Krupnikov, Yanna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bias
Consensus
Discourse
Experiments
Information processing
Labeling
Motivation
Objectives
Polarization
Political discourse
Politics
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Summary:Rather than exhibiting bias or open-minded reasoning at baseline, we argue that information processing is motivated by whatever goals a context makes salient. Thus, if politics feels like debate, people will be motivated to argue for their side. If politics feels like deliberation, they will be motivated to seek consensus through open-minded processing. Results from three experiments demonstrate: (1) Politics evokes thoughts similar to conflictual contexts and dissimilar from deliberative contexts. (2) Consequently, information labeled "political" primes the motivation to counterargue, leading to opinion polarization. Absent such labeling, no such motivation is evident, explaining why bias is common but not inherent to politics. (3) Despite this capacity for bias, people can be motivated to actively process and accept counterattitudinal information by simply making the value of open-mindedness salient. This suggests open-minded discourse is possible even absent motivation to evaluate information accurately. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for political discourse.
ISSN:0092-5853
1540-5907
DOI:10.1111/ajps.12562