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Cited by 156Social and Intergroup PsychologyDecision-Making and Behavioral EconomicsElectoral Systems and Political Participation

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 27 of the 27 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Rethinking the link between cognitive sophistication and politically motivated reasoning.

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Tappin, Ben M., Pennycook, Gordon, Rand, David G.·2021·Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
DOI 10.1037/xge0000974
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Abstract

Partisan disagreement over policy-relevant facts is a salient feature of contemporary American politics. Perhaps surprisingly, such disagreements are often the greatest among opposing partisans who are the most cognitively sophisticated. A prominent hypothesis for this phenomenon is that cognitive sophistication magnifies politically motivated reasoning-commonly defined as reasoning driven by the motivation to reach conclusions congenial to one's political group identity. Numerous experimental studies report evidence in favor of this hypothesis. However, in the designs of such studies, political group identity is often confounded with prior factual beliefs about the issue in question; and, crucially, reasoning can be affected by such beliefs in the absence of any political group motivation. This renders much existing evidence for the hypothesis ambiguous. To shed new light on this issue, we conducted three studies in which we statistically controlled for people's prior factual beliefs-attempting to isolate a direct effect of political group identity-when estimating the association between their cognitive sophistication, political group identity, and reasoning in the paradigmatic study design used in the literature. We observed a robust direct effect of political group identity on reasoning but found no evidence that cognitive sophistication magnified this effect. In contrast, we found fairly consistent evidence that cognitive sophistication magnified a direct effect of prior factual beliefs on reasoning. Our results suggest that there is currently a lack of clear empirical evidence that cognitive sophistication magnifies politically motivated reasoning as commonly understood and emphasize the conceptual and empirical challenges that confront tests of this hypothesis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

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Metadata

Authors
Tappin, B. M., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G.
ORCID
Venue
Journal of Experimental Psychology: General
Publisher
American Psychological Association (APA)
Published
2021-06
Volume
150
Issue
6
Pages
1095-1114
ISSN
  • 0096-3445 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-2222
DOI
10.1037/xge0000974
OpenAlex
W3094739336
Cited by
154
References
23
Citations by year
2026: 12 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 20 · 2022: 20 · 2021: 28
FWCI
32.16
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by
Locations
  • Journal of Experimental Psychology General (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • DSpace@MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
  • Economic and Social Research Council
  • Miami Foundation
  • William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
  • John Templeton Foundation
  • Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • Cogito Foundation
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
  • Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
Keywords
cognitive sophistication, partisan disagreement, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias
MeSH terms
Cognition, Humans, Motivation, Politics, Problem Solving, United States

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