A large literature shows how voters’ decision making is often biased due to various mechanisms often referred to as “motivated reasoning” (Druckman, 2012). For example, people are more likely to uncritically accept (reject) information that confirms (disproves) their previous beliefs. Such motivated reasoning has been shown to be exacerbated in politics, especially in a polarized setting (Druckman, Peterson and Slothuus, 2013). Less attention, however, has been given to exploring the “boundaries” of such motivated reasoning. How and when are voters motivated to form an accurate or informed view on an issue? My paper (co-authored with professor John Gastil at the Pennsylvania State University), published in Political Psychology, utilizes a real-world case and survey experiment data to explore this issue. We tested whether information from a deliberative minipublic – who met over a short period of time to deliberate on a proposal to ban GMO in their county – helped improve voters’ knowledge about the upcoming ballot measure. Contrary to expectations from extant theory, we found information from fellow citizens significantly improved voters’ knowledge. More importantly, those who should have resisted the new information the most were often those who improved the most. While more work is needed to confirm and better understand the mechanisms in play, this work gives hope minipublics can help inform voters more generally on political issues. Currently, we are working on a new project where we explore minipublic trust and legitimacy, in addition to whether some groups are more likely than others to be influenced by minipublic statements.
Cite
Már, K. and Gastil, J. (2020), Tracing the Boundaries of Motivated Reasoning: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Improve Voter Knowledge. Political Psychology, 41: 107-127. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12591
Kristinn Már Ársælsson 