Learning Together Slowly: Bayesian Learning about Political Facts
Abstract
Although many studies suggest that voters learn about political facts with prejudice toward their preexisting beliefs, none have fully characterized all inputs to Bayes’ Rule, leaving uncertainty about the magnitude of bias. This paper evaluates political learning by first highlighting the importance of careful measures of each input and then presenting a statistical model and experiment that measure the magnitude of departure from Bayesian learning. Subjects learn as cautious Bayesians, updating their beliefs at about 73% of perfect application of Bayes’ Rule. They are also modestly biased. For information consistent with prior beliefs, subject learning is not statistically distinguishable from perfect Bayesian. Inconsistent information, however, corresponds to learning less than perfect. Despite bias, beliefs do not polarize. With small monetary incentives for accuracy, aggregate beliefs converge toward common truth. Cautious Bayesian learning appears to be a reasonable model of how citizens process political information.
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Individuals act as Bayesian learners who incorporate new information into their evaluations of the political and social environment.
“and that individuals act as Bayesian learners who incorporate new information into their evaluations of the political and social environment25,26.”
From Factual knowledge can reduce attitude polarization (2025) · cites this paper as [25]
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“Partisans can be motivated to evaluate objective facts more even-handedly, for example with incentives like financial rewards (Bullock et al. 2013; Hill 2017; Prior, Sood, and Khanna 2015), accuracy scores (Prior, Sood, and Khanna 2015), or even simply an additional request to justify one’s…”
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Christensen, L. (2021) · Journal of Experimental Political Science · doi:10.1017/xps.2021.21 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“Similar to, e.g. Hill (2017), I measure prior beliefs, administer the treatment and measure posterior beliefs in the same survey.”
ResultAlarmed but Unmoved: The Impact of the Provision of Correct Local Environmental Information
Li, Z. (2022) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-022-09819-w · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“The results are consistent with recent findings by Wood & Porter (2019) that citizens largely heed factual information and by Hill (2017) that people learn political facts that are inconsistent with their prior preferences more cautiously and slowly compared with the learning of consistent…”
Political reinforcement learners
Schulz, L., & Bhui, R. (2024) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2023.12.001 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“In many cases, people update their beliefs similarly across the political spectrum [39 – 41].”
BackgroundZmigrod, L. (2022) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1080/1047840x.2022.2065134 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“Experimentally, when monetary incentives are given for accuracy—such that utility-maximizing and error-minimizing goals align—individuals’ political beliefs appear to reflect a cautious Bayesian learner (Hill, 2017).”
BackgroundThe Imperfect Beliefs Voting ModelPreprint
Ogden, B. G. (2014) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2431447 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“This symmetry is consistent with empirical (e.g., Bartels (1996); Cabral and Hoxby (2012)) and experimental (e.g., Hill (2016)) evidence that individual voter “mistakes” average to zero in the aggregate.”
Gehrke, M., & Yang, F. W. (2025) · Governance · doi:10.1111/gove.70019 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Authoritarian cue effect of state repression
Zhu, J., Bai, S., Kang, S., Juan, W., & Liu, K. (2024) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12916 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
An Examination of Accurate Versus “Biased” Mentalizing in Moral and Economic Decision-Making
Park, B., Kim, M. J., & Young, L. (2021) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-51890-5_27 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“One recent study examined how people learn factual political statements based on noisy feedback from a computer, and found that participants closely followed Bayesian updating, but not perfectly (Hill, 2017).”
BackgroundRelated Fact Checks: a tool for combating fake newsPreprint
Guha, S. (2017) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1711.00715 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
“Hill (Hill 2017) finds empirical evidence that voters do gradually change their opinions when presented with the facts.”
BackgroundEvidence Can Change Partisan Minds but Less So in Hostile Contexts
Kim, J. W. (2025) · British Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1017/s0007123424000899 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Other-Regarding Behaviors and Attitudes toward Asylum Seekers
Sonmez, B., & Iacono, S. L. (2022) · Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · doi:10.1177/23780231211073392 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“…evidence that people may update their behavior and attitudes in favor of accuracy motivation rather than polarizing their views to a certain extent (Guess and Coppock 2020; Hill 2017), even though new information communicated with them is not congruent with their political domain and prior beliefs.”
BackgroundInfluentialWeathering the Storm: Discordant Learning about Reputations for Reliability
Donahue, B., & Crescenzi, M. J. C. (2023) · Foreign Policy Analysis · doi:10.1093/fpa/orac037 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Experience and self‐interest: Diverging responses to global warming
Gazmararian, A. F., & Milner, H. V. (2026) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.70061 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
The Ocean of Possible Truth. Drivers and Consequences of News Accuracy Judgements OnlinePreprint
von Hohenberg, B. C. (2018) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3281038 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Generating Fact Checking BriefsPreprint
Fan, A., Piktus, A., Petroni, F., Wenzek, G., Saeidi, M., Vlachos, A., Bordes, A., & Riedel, S. (2020) · arXiv (Cornell University) · doi:10.17863/cam.78760 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Beyond Belief Change: The Persuasive Returns of Targeting Attitude–Relevant Beliefs
Velez, Y. R., Liu, P., & Clifford, S. (2026) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055426101622 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Correcting Myopia: Effect of Information Provision on Support for Preparedness Policy
Weller, N., & Jamieson, T. (2023) · Political research quarterly · doi:10.1177/10659129231221486 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“This is important, because it suggests that the provision of information can cause respondents to update their prior beliefs, and in this case lead to support for public health spending (Hill 2017).”
Background'The People' vs. the Liberal International Order?
Koch, C. M. (2024) · doi:10.1093/oso/9780198901020.001.0001 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
The Effects of Certain and Uncertain Incentives on Effort and Knowledge Accuracy
Jamieson, T. H., & Weller, N. (2019) · Journal of Experimental Political Science · doi:10.1017/xps.2019.27 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Prior studies show that people respond to financial incentives with improved political knowledge (Prior and Lupia 2008); people update their beliefs in response to incentives, even if they are not perfect Bayesians (Hill 2017); and incentives for accuracy reduce partisan bias (Prior, Sood, and Khanna 2015).”
BackgroundInfluentialArgumentation strategies in party competition
Hafer, C., Izzo, F., & Landa, D. (2025) · American Journal of Political Science · doi:10.1111/ajps.12983 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Partisanship in the Trump Trade War: Evidence from County-Level Crop Planting Data
Carcelli, S. P., & Park, K. (2024) · International Studies Quarterly · doi:10.1093/isq/sqae141 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“The existing literature suggests that increased information decreases motivated reasoning (Hill, 2017).”
BackgroundFinancial bailouts and the decline of establishment politics
Ruiz-Rufino, R. (2021) · Electoral Studies · doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102292 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“This is important as it prevents from properly identifying a learning process which would require observing data over a longer period of time (Dinas, 2013) or an experimental setting (Hill, 2017).”
BackgroundFlood Sensitivity, Risk Perception, and Support for Climate Action in the United StatesPreprint
Jamieson, T. H. (2021) · doi:10.33774/apsa-2021-8x1q1 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Kiil, F. (2025) · Politics and the Life Sciences · doi:10.1017/pls.2025.10001 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“…even when research participants are rewarded financially for giving correct answers to factual political questions (e.g., Bullock et al., 2015; Hill, 2017; Khanna & Sood, 2018), and because recent research has found support for the motivated reasoning explanation of perceptual divides rather…”
InfluentialHuber, G., & Graham, M. H. (2025) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/bs.hbem.2025.09.006 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Historical Analogies and Public Support for Foreign Policy Action
Blair, C., Lendway, P., & Schwartz, J. A. (2025) · Journal of Conflict Resolution · doi:10.1177/00220027251399905 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“Speci fi cally, since unfamiliar historical analogies provide more new information than familiar ones, unfamiliar analogies may spur more learning and Bayesian updating (e.g., Hill 2017).”
Oscillations in Perceptual Accuracy: How Well Do People Perceive Parties’ Ideological Positions?
Çakır, S., Alkan, O., Dassonneville, R. C., & Somer‐Topcu, Z. (2026) · Political Behavior · doi:10.1007/s11109-026-10134-x · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Go, M. H., Kweon, Y., Miwa, H., & Ono, Y. (2026) · Public Opinion Quarterly · doi:10.1093/poq/nfag030 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“In these situations, accuracy motivations are more likely to pre-vail, making individuals more inclined to accept credible corrective information (Bullock 2011; Hill 2017 ; Pennycook and Rand 2019).”
Peterson, E. (2023) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01552-6 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Confirmation Bias as Rational MistrustPreprint
Martinez, G., & Tenev, N. H. (2020) · RePEc: Research Papers in Economics · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2010.01249 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
“14 Hill (2017) finds that subjects learning about political facts do update beliefs, but more slowly than Bayes’ rule would suggest; in their experiment signal quality is known, unlike our setup. rational mistrust of those with opposing views.”
Zmigrod, L. (2022) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/3jspb · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Information Theory and Biased BeliefsPreprint
Little, A. T. (2022) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/vfqy2 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Gingerich, D., & Vogler, J. P. (2023) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.4471223 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Gaudette, J., Hill, S. J., Kousser, T. B., Lockhart, M., Romero, M., & Uribe, L. (2023) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/x9zg5 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Hill, S. J.
- Affiliations
- University of California San Diego (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hill, Seth J.
- ORCID
- Hill, Seth J.
- Venue
- The Journal of Politics
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2017-10
- Volume
- 79
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1403-1418
- ISSN
- 0022-3816 (ISSN-L)
- 1468-2508
- OpenAlex
- W2746088002
- Cited by
- 159
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 28 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 5 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 66.49
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Politics (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- University of Chicago
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › General Decision Sciences › Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Media Influence and Politics
- Keywords
- political learning, Bayesian updating, belief updating, cognitive biases, political information processing, belief polarization, financial incentives
About these checks
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