Partisan disagreements about politically relevant facts appear to represent genuine differences in beliefs rather than insincere cheerleading, according to new research published in the American Journal of Political Science.
The findings provide more evidence that Republicans and Democrats tend to seek out information from slanted news sources and adopt inaccurate beliefs that cast their party in a favorable light.
“In surveys, many respondents agree with factually inaccurate statements about a range of topics such as the economy or voter fraud. One possibility is that they sincerely believe these things,” explained study author Erik Peterson, an assistant professor of political science at Texas A&M University.
“Another possibility is that they don’t actually believe these statements, but endorse them in a survey because it is costless to do so and reflects favorably on their party. A classic example is that partisans are reluctant to report that unemployment has declined if it has done so under a president from the other party.
“Some political scientists have begun to test between these two explanations by running experiments in which respondents are paid for correctly answering factual questions and considering whether this reduces the partisan divisions measured in surveys,” Peterson said.
“We wanted to expand on these previous studies by replicating these studies while (1) focusing on facts that were being regularly contested at the time we fielded our surveys and (2) allowing people to select news articles to read before answering the questions to see if these same concerns applied to the partisan divides over preferred news sources that also show up in surveys.”
In the study, 2,700 participants were shown statements — such as “Millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election” or “Forty percent of firearm sales in the U.S. occur without a background check” — and asked to rate them as either true or false. They also indicated how confident they were (ranging from “not at all sure” to “extremely sure”) of their answer.
Before providing true or false ratings for each statement, the participants selected one of five news article on the topic to read. The articles included one left-leaning source, one right-leaning source, one source with specialized expertise, and two mainstream news sources. In addition, the participants were randomly assigned to either receive or not receive incentives for correctly answering.
The researchers found a partisan divide in factual beliefs. There was a substantial difference between what Democrats believed was true and what Republicans believed was true. The financial incentives only slightly reduced this divide.
Peterson and his colleagues also observed a “glaring” partisan divide in news choice — and the financial incentives had no impact. Those who had the opportunity to earn rewards for correct responses were just as likely as their counterparts to select a partisan news source.
The findings indicate that “the types of partisan divides over facts and preferred sources of information that regularly appear in surveys do not appear to be ‘cheap talk,'” Peterson told PsyPost.
“In large part, people are expressing sincere partisan disagreements about factual evidence on a number of important topics. This shows how partisan polarization now extends into views of factual evidence, not just opinions about the issues.”
As part of the study, a subset of 855 participants also agreed to have their web browser activity tracked. The researchers found that partisan slant of respondents’ real-world media diet corresponded to the news selections they made in the study.
The findings are line with another study, published in The Journal of Politics, which found evidence that survey responses about untrue political rumors were mostly accurate measures of genuine beliefs.
But as with any research, the new study includes some caveats.
“There may be topics on which the ‘costs’ of being wrong are so high that these types of partisan divisions will decrease more than what we find here. So it is important for future work to consider other issues and other ways in which the costs of being wrong may be heightened to see if these results still hold,” Peterson said.
The study, “Partisan Gaps in Political Information and Information‐Seeking Behavior: Motivated Reasoning or Cheerleading?“, was authored by Erik Peterson and Shanto Iyengar.
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