Asymmetry in Political Information Processing: Congruency-based reasoning in belief revision and political decision making
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Research on how individuals process information in politics has provided evidence for the selective processing of information. This has often been attributed to “motivated reasoning” (MR) , which is targeted towards partisan goals as opposed to ‘rational’ reasoning, which tries to achieve accuracy goals. We propose that political reasoning is asymmetrical and MR is only triggered when belief-challenging information is presented and not when the information is belief-conforming (congruent). To test these claims we performed an experiment and found that for congruent information, the initial polarization of the subject did not significantly influence the trust rating for the information item. But the evaluation did affect the belief update. In contrast, for incongruent information the polariza- tion of the subject influenced the trust rating but there was no significant effect of the evaluation on the belief update. The finding is consistent with behavior that tries to reduce cogni- tive dissonance.
DOI: 10.48448/6849-s034
Authors: Cognitive Science Society 2023, Chattopadhyay, Abhirup, Karnick, Harish, Srinivasan, Narayanan
Institution: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6910646731