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Does Social Disagreement Attenuate Partisan Motivated Reasoning? A Test Case Concerning Economic Evaluations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2018

Joshua Robison
Joshua Robison*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Aarhus
*
*Corresponding author. Email: jrobison@ps.au.dk
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Abstract

Research on partisan motivated reasoning shows that citizens perceive the world differently based upon their partisan allegiances. Here we marshal evidence from several national surveys to investigate whether partisan motivated reasoning is attenuated among partisans situated within disagreeable political discussion networks. While our analyses suggest that exposure to interpersonal disagreement is associated with weaker partisan identities, we find limited evidence that disagreement attenuates partisan differences in knowledge or retrospective evaluations of the economy. This suggests that interpersonal disagreement is unlikely to help reduce partisan motivated reasoning. Our results thus speak to important debates concerning the influence of social discussion on political attitudes, the nature of partisan motivated reasoning and the ability of citizens to hold elites accountable.

Keywords

motivated reasoningeconomic evaluationspolitical knowledgepolitical discussion
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 50 , Issue 4 , October 2020 , pp. 1245 - 1261
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018

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