Does Counter-Attitudinal Information Cause Backlash? Results from Three Large Survey Experiments
Abstract
Several theoretical perspectives suggest that when individuals are exposed to counter-attitudinal evidence or arguments, their pre-existing opinions and beliefs are reinforced, resulting in a phenomenon sometimes known as ‘backlash’. This article formalizes the concept of backlash and specifies how it can be measured. It then presents the results from three survey experiments – two on Mechanical Turk and one on a nationally representative sample – that find no evidence of backlash, even under theoretically favorable conditions. While a casual reading of the literature on information processing suggests that backlash is rampant, these results indicate that it is much rarer than commonly supposed.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
There is mixed research regarding whether corrections may actually increase belief in the original misinformation or in other misleading claims that fail to get corrected.
“Moreover, there is mixed research regarding whether corrections may actually increase belief in the original misinformation 121,124-126 or in other misleading claims that fail to get corrected 127 .”
From Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response (2020) · cites this paper as [121]
Prior experiments on political information use thin informational treatments consisting of a single piece of information or one argument.
“However, these experiments use thin informational treatments consisting of a single piece of information. Researchers typically present to participants a single fact relevant to a topic (e.g., ref. 4) or one argument either supporting or opposing a policy proposal (e.g., ref. 23).”
From Factual knowledge can reduce attitude polarization (2025) · cites this paper as [23]
Cites
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124 · Cited by 28,810 · see citing works
Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1975) · Utility, Probability, and Human Decision Making · doi:10.1007/978-94-010-1834-0_8 · Cited by 22,650 · see citing works
Amazon's Mechanical Turk: A New Source of Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Data?
Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691610393980 · Cited by 9,996 · see citing works
The case for motivated reasoning.
Kunda, Z. (1990) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480 · Cited by 9,022 · see citing works
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Zaller, J. R. (1992) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511818691 · Cited by 7,785 · see citing works
Statistics and Causal Inference
Holland, P. W. (1986) · Journal of the American Statistical Association · doi:10.1080/01621459.1986.10478354 · Cited by 5,293 · see citing works
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion.
Kenski, H. C., & Zaller, J. R. (1993) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2074664 · Cited by 5,212 · see citing works
Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.37.11.2098 · Cited by 4,583 · see citing works
Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs
Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00214.x · Cited by 4,344 · see citing works
Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk
Berinsky, A. J., Huber, G. A., & Lenz, G. S. (2012) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mpr057 · Cited by 4,008 · see citing works
Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook
Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L. A. (2015) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aaa1160 · Cited by 3,245 · see citing works
When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions
Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2 · Cited by 3,173 · see citing works
The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign
Lazarsfeld, P. F., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1968) · Cited by 2,419 · see citing works
Sears, D. O. (1986) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.51.3.515 · Cited by 2,138 · see citing works
HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known
Kerr, N. L. (1998) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0203_4 · Cited by 1,989 · see citing works
BART: Bayesian additive regression trees
Chipman, H. A., George, E. I., & McCulloch, R. E. (2010) · The Annals of Applied Statistics · doi:10.1214/09-aoas285 · Cited by 1,875 · see citing works
The people's choice: How the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign.
Britt, S. H. (1945) · Journal of Consulting Psychology · doi:10.1037/h0051801 · Cited by 1,853 · see citing works
Hauser, D. J., & Schwarz, N. (2016) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-015-0578-z · Cited by 1,739 · see citing works
Bayesian Nonparametric Modeling for Causal Inference
Hill, J. L. (2011) · Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics · doi:10.1198/jcgs.2010.08162 · Cited by 1,617 · see citing works
Prior, M. (2007) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139878425 · Cited by 1,598 · see citing works
Beyond the Running Tally: Partisan Bias in Political Perceptions
Bartels, L. M. (2002) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1023/a:1021226224601 · Cited by 1,468 · see citing works
Ideology, motivated reasoning, and cognitive reflection
Kahan, D. M. (2013) · Judgment and Decision Making · doi:10.1017/s1930297500005271 · Cited by 1,302 · see citing works
Effective messages in vaccine promotion: a randomized trial
Nyhan, B., Reifler, J., Richey, S., & Freed, G. L. (2014) · Pediatrics · doi:10.1542/peds.2013-2365 · Cited by 1,300 · see citing works
Lodge, M., & Taber, C. S. (2013) · doi:10.1017/cbo9781139032490 · Cited by 1,281 · see citing works
The Generalizability of Survey Experiments
Mullinix, K. J., Leeper, T. J., Druckman, J. N., & Jeremy Freese, A. (2015) · Journal of Experimental Political Science · doi:10.1017/xps.2015.19 · Cited by 1,235 · see citing works
(2007) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.45-1733 · Cited by 1,181 · see citing works
Redlawsk, D. P. (2002) · The Journal of Politics · doi:10.1111/1468-2508.00161 · Cited by 978 · see citing works
The Statistical Crisis in Science
Gelman, A., & Loken, E. (2014) · American Scientist · doi:10.1511/2014.111.460 · Cited by 963 · see citing works
Chandler, J., Mueller, P., & Paolacci, G. (2014) · Behavior Research Methods · doi:10.3758/s13428-013-0365-7 · Cited by 950 · see citing works
The Elusive Backfire Effect: Mass Attitudes’ Steadfast Factual Adherence
Wood, T., & Porter, E. (2019) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-018-9443-y · Cited by 904 · see citing works
BART: Bayesian Additive Regression Trees
Chipman, H., George, E. I., & McCulloch, R. E. (2006) · ScholarlyCommons (University of Pennsylvania) · Cited by 889 · see citing works
Ansolabehere, S. D., Rodden, J., & Snyder, J. M. (2008) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055408080210 · Cited by 737 · see citing works
Political Parties, Motivated Reasoning, and Public Opinion Formation
Leeper, T. J., & Slothuus, R. (2014) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12164 · Cited by 722 · see citing works
Partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics
Bullock, J. G., Gerber, A. S., Hill, S. J., & Huber, G. A. (2015) · Quarterly Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1561/100.00014074 · Cited by 686 · see citing works
Nyhan, B. J., & Reifler, J. (2014) · Vaccine · doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2014.11.017 · Cited by 624 · see citing works
Why Do Partisan Media Polarize Viewers?
Levendusky, M. S. (2013) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12008 · Cited by 587 · see citing works
The Affective Tipping Point: Do Motivated Reasoners Ever “Get It”?
Redlawsk, D. P., Civettini, A. J. W., & Emmerson, K. M. (2010) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2010.00772.x · Cited by 576 · see citing works
How voters decide: information processing during election campaigns
(2007) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.44-2956 · Cited by 539 · see citing works
Lau, R. R., & Redlawsk, D. P. (2006) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511791048 · Cited by 526 · see citing works
Generalizing from Survey Experiments Conducted on Mechanical Turk: A Replication Approach
Coppock, A. (2019) · Political Science Research and Methods · doi:10.1017/psrm.2018.10 · Cited by 515 · see citing works
Self-citationRumors and Health Care Reform: Experiments in Political Misinformation
Berinsky, A. J. (2015) · British Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1017/s0007123415000186 · Cited by 511 · see citing works
MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT PERCEPTUAL BIAS
Gerber, A. S., & GREEN, D. P. (1999) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev.polisci.2.1.189 · Cited by 496 · see citing works
The Motivated Processing of Political Arguments
Taber, C. S., Cann, D. M., & Kucsova, S. (2009) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-008-9075-8 · Cited by 465 · see citing works
Changing Minds or Changing Channels?: Partisan News in an Age of Choice
Arceneaux, K., & Johnson, M. (2013) · doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226047447.001.0001 · Cited by 450 · see citing works
Prior, M., Sood, G., & Khanna, K. (2015) · Quarterly Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1561/100.00014127 · Cited by 418 · see citing works
Ideology, Motivated Reasoning, and Cognitive Reflection: An Experimental Study
Kahan, D. M. (2012) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2182588 · Cited by 331 · see citing works
Humphreys, M., Sierra, R., & van der Windt, P. C. (2013) · Political Analysis · doi:10.1093/pan/mps021 · Cited by 293 · see citing works
No Need to Watch: How the Effects of Partisan Media Can Spread via Interpersonal Discussions
Druckman, J. N., Levendusky, M. S., & McLain, A. (2018) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12325 · Cited by 291 · see citing works
The Political Environment and Citizen Competence
Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Jerit, J., & Rich, R. F. (2001) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.2307/2669349 · Cited by 264 · see citing works
GREEN, D. P., & Kern, H. (2012) · Public Opinion Quarterly · doi:10.1093/poq/nfs036 · Cited by 251 · see citing works
Partisan Bias and the Bayesian Ideal in the Study of Public Opinion
Bullock, J. G. (2009) · The Journal of Politics · doi:10.1017/s0022381609090914 · Cited by 240 · see citing works
Changing minds or changing channels?: partisan news in an age of choice
Arceneaux, K., & Johnson, M. (2014) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.51-5287 · Cited by 233 · see citing works
The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility
Berry, J., & Sobieraj, S. (2013) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.186974 · Cited by 228 · see citing works
Boomerangs versus javelins: how polarization constrains communication on climate change
Zhou, J. (2016) · Environmental Politics · doi:10.1080/09644016.2016.1166602 · Cited by 208 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Finally, Zhou (2016) identifies ‘boomerang’ effects in framing experiments on Republicans’ responses to climate change messaging.”
BackgroundClifford, S., & Jerit, J. (2014) · Journal of Experimental Political Science · doi:10.1017/xps.2014.5 · Cited by 206 · see citing works
Druckman, J. N. (2012) · Critical Review · doi:10.1080/08913811.2012.711022 · Cited by 190 · see citing works
Miller, A. G., McHoskey, J. W., Bane, C. M., & Dowd, T. G. (1993) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.561 · Cited by 188 · see citing works
Motivated Reasoning and Public Opinion
Strickland, A. A., Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. G. (2011) · Journal of Health Politics Policy and Law · doi:10.1215/03616878-1460524 · Cited by 158 · see citing works
Effects of Evidence on Attitudes: Is Polarization the Norm?
Kuhn, D., & Lao, J. R. (1996) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9280.1996.tb00340.x · Cited by 146 · see citing works
Opinion Backlash and Public Attitudes: Are Political Advances in Gay Rights Counterproductive?
Bishin, B. G., Hayes, T. J., Incantalupo, M. B., & Smith, C. A. (2015) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12181 · Cited by 129 · see citing works
Demand Effects in Survey Experiments: An Empirical AssessmentPreprint
Mummolo, J., & Peterson, E. (2017) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2956147 · Cited by 127 · see citing works
Chipman, H., George, E. I., & McCulloch, R. E. (2007) · The MIT Press eBooks · doi:10.7551/mitpress/7503.003.0038 · Cited by 101 · see citing works
Autocratic Legislatures and Expropriation Risk
Wilson, M. C., & Wright, J. (2015) · British Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1017/s0007123415000149 · Cited by 97 · see citing works
Coppock, A., & GREEN, D. P. (2014) · Political Science Research and Methods · doi:10.1017/psrm.2014.10 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Self-citationThe Statistical Crisis in Science
Gelman, A., & Loken, E. (2016) · Princeton University Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctvc778jw.30 · Cited by 33 · see citing works
Investigator Characteristics and Respondent Behavior in Online Surveys
White, A. R., Strezhnev, A., Lucas, C., et al. (2018) · Journal of Experimental Political Science · doi:10.1017/xps.2017.25 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
randomizr: Easy-to-Use Tools for Common Forms of Random Assignment and Sampling
Coppock, A. (2015) · doi:10.32614/cran.package.randomizr · Cited by 16 · see citing works
Self-citationA Theory of Rational Attitude PolarizationPreprint
Benoît, J. (2016) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2754316 · Cited by 13 · see citing works
Crowdsourced Data Preprocessing with R and Amazon Mechanical Turk
Thomas, J. L. (2016) · The R Journal · doi:10.32614/rj-2016-020 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Guess, A. C., & Coppock, A. (2018) · Harvard Dataverse · doi:10.7910/dvn/j7wntm · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response
Bavel, J. J. V., Baicker, K., Boggio, P. S., Capraro, V., Cichocka, A., Cikara, M., Crockett, M. J., Crum, A. J., Douglas, K. M., Druckman, J. N., et al. (2020) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-020-0884-z · Cited by 4,964 · see citing works
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2021) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2021.02.007 · Cited by 1,360 · see citing works
The evidence for motivated reasoning in climate change preference formation
Druckman, J. N., & McGrath, M. C. (2019) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0360-1 · Cited by 733 · see citing works
Social Media, Echo Chambers, and Political Polarization
Barberá, P. (2020) · Social Media and Democracy · doi:10.1017/9781108890960.004 · Cited by 373 · see citing works
Searching for the backfire effect: Measurement and design considerations.
Swire-Thompson, B., DeGutis, J., & Lazer, D. (2020) · Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.06.006 · Cited by 360 · see citing works
Long-term effectiveness of inoculation against misinformation: Three longitudinal experiments.
Maertens, R., Roozenbeek, J., Basol, M., & van der Linden, S. (2021) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied · doi:10.1037/xap0000315 · Cited by 321 · see citing works
How digital media drive affective polarization through partisan sorting
Törnberg, P. (2022) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2207159119 · Cited by 288 · see citing works
Cognitive–motivational mechanisms of political polarization in social-communicative contexts
Jost, J. T., Baldassarri, D. S., & Druckman, J. N. (2022) · Nature Reviews Psychology · doi:10.1038/s44159-022-00093-5 · Cited by 276 · see citing works
The gateway belief model: a large-scale replication
van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., & Maibach, E. (2019) · Journal of Environmental Psychology · doi:10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.01.009 · Cited by 262 · see citing works
Does information change attitudes toward immigrants?
Grigorieff, A., Roth, C., & Ubfal, D. (2020) · Demography · doi:10.1007/s13524-020-00882-8 · Cited by 254 · see citing works
A Framework for the Study of Persuasion
Druckman, J. N. (2022) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-051120-110428 · Cited by 126 · see citing works
When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning
Bayes, R., Druckman, J. N., Goods, A., & Molden, D. C. (2020) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12663 · Cited by 119 · see citing works
Van Bavel, J. J., Robertson, C. E., del Rosario, K., Rasmussen, J., & Rathje, S. (2024) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-022123-110258 · Cited by 121 · see citing works
Quantifying the potential persuasive returns to political microtargeting
Tappin, B. M., Wittenberg, C., Hewitt, L. B., Berinsky, A. J., & Rand, D. G. (2023) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2216261120 · Cited by 83 · see citing works
How to study democratic backsliding
Druckman, J. N. (2024) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12942 · Cited by 56 · see citing works
Factual knowledge can reduce attitude polarization
Stagnaro, M. N., & Amsalem, E. (2025) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-025-58697-3 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
“4,13,27 – 29)andarguments 23,30,31 presentedtothem.”
Nordbrandt, M. (2022) · Frontiers in Political Science · doi:10.3389/fpos.2022.921188 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“, 2018; Kim, 2019) and attenuated (e.g., Parsons, 2010; Barberá, 2015; Beam et al., 2018; Druckman and Levendusky, 2019; Guess and Coppock, 2020; Levendusky and Stecula, 2021; Padró-Solanet and Balcells, 2022) levels of polarization linked to crosscutting communication in studies with varied designs and measurements a…”
BackgroundResultInfluential
- Authors
- Guess, A., & Coppock, A.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- Yale University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Guess, Andrew
- Venue
- British Journal of Political Science
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2018-11-05
- Volume
- 50
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1497-1515
- ISSN
- 0007-1234 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-2112
- OpenAlex
- W2900230278
- Cited by
- 372
- References
- 70
- Citations by year
- 2026: 28 · 2025: 33 · 2024: 61 · 2023: 39 · 2022: 59 · 2021: 38 · 2020: 70 · 2019: 40 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 85.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- British Journal of Political Science (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
- Keywords
- backlash, counter-attitudinal information, attitude change, belief reinforcement, information processing, survey experiment
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
