Partisan Ambivalence,Split‐Ticket Voting,and Divided Government

Despite recent periods of unified party control of government in Washington, DC, divided government has been the norm in recent decades. Scholars agree that when both presidential and congressional candidates are on the ballot the driving force behind divided government at the national level is split‐ticket voting. In this study, I present a new psychological model of split‐ticket voting. I posit that ticket splitting is motivated by ambivalence over the two major political parties. I test this partisan ambivalence explanation on split‐ticket votes between president and Congress nationally between 1988 and 2004 and voting for state executive offices in Ohio in 1998. I find that partisan ambivalence predicts ticket splitting at both the national and state levels and does so about as well as some other explanations. The results of this study suggest that divided government occurs, in part, because voters are divided within themselves.     

Tracing the Boundaries of Motivated Reasoning: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Improve Voter Knowledge

A large body of work shows that reasoning motivated by partisan cues and prior attitudes leads to unreflective decisions and disparities in empirical beliefs across groups. Surprisingly little research, however, has tested the limits of motivated reasoning. We argue that the publicly circulated findings of deliberative minipublics can spark a more reflective motivation in voters when these bodies provide policy-relevant factual information. To test that proposition, we conducted a survey experiment using information generated by one such minipublic during an election. Results showed that exposure to the minipublic's findings improved the accuracy of voters' empirical beliefs regarding a ballot proposition on the regulation of genetically modified seeds. This treatment effect transcended voters' partisan identities and prior environmental attitudes. In some instances, the respondents showing the greatest knowledge gains were those who a directional motivated-reasoning account would have expected to resist the treatment most effectively, owing to party identity or prior attitudes.     

Unskilled and optimistic: Overconfident predictions despite calibrated knowledge of relative skill

Those who are less skilled tend to overestimate their abilities more than do those who are more skilled—the so-called Dunning–Kruger effect. Less-skilled performers presumably have less of the knowledge needed to make informed guesses about their relative performance. If so, the Dunning–Kruger effect should vanish when participants do have access to information about their relative ability and performance. Competitive bridge players predicted their results for bridge sessions before playing and received feedback about their actual performance following each session. Despite knowing their own relative skill and showing unbiased memory for their performance, they made overconfident predictions consistent with a Dunning–Kruger effect. This bias persisted even though players received accurate feedback about their predictions after each session. The finding of a Dunning–Kruger effect despite knowledge of relative ability suggests that differential self-knowledge is not a necessary precondition for the Dunning–Kruger effect. At least in some cases, the effect might reflect a different form of irrational optimism.     

Triangulating Political Responsibility: The Motivated Formation of Responsibility Judgments

This article analyzes the process through which partisan bias arises during the formation of citizens' judgments of political responsibility. Informed by theories of motivated political reasoning, it argues that exposure to partisan cues motivates partisans to pursue directional goals, goals which bias the cognitive processing of information and, in turn, overall judgments of responsibility. It further argues that the nature of this biased processing will be such that partisans devalue information inconsistent with their partisan affect. Using a pair of experiments, I test these hypotheses by manipulating both objective evidence concerning gubernatorial responsibility for a state's fiscal imbalance and the presence of partisan cues. Findings support both sets of expectations. The results also suggest that the effects of partisan bias are greater in judgments tied to institutional actions than in those tied to institutional roles and expectations.     

The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment

Efforts to influence attitudes on highly polarizing issues, such as climate change, often fail because individuals interpret political messages through the lens of their partisan identities. However, shifting the identity lens through which an individual interprets a message may result in more effective political communication. Through a preregistered survey experiment (n = 978), this study tested how priming either a partisan or a nonpartisan (parental) identity influenced the effectiveness of a climate change frame on several attitudinal outcomes. Findings suggest that identity salience—specifically partisan identity salience—can influence the effectiveness of a frame. Among Republican parents, receiving a message about the impact of climate change on future generations increased climate change concern and intended proclimate political behaviors, but this framing effect disappeared when a partisan identity was first primed. Among Democrat parents, framing had no significant effect until a partisan identity was first primed. The findings offer important insight into the role that identity salience plays in framing effectiveness and suggest that political communication on polarized issues is likely to be more effective at building bipartisan agreement when nonpartisan identities are salient.     

The Aggregated Consequences of Motivated Reasoning and the Dynamics of Partisan Presidential Approval

Research in political psychology has shown the importance of motivated reasoning as a prism through which individuals view the political world. From this we develop the hypothesis that, with strong positive beliefs firmly in place, partisan groups ignore or discount information about the performance of political figures they like. We then speculate about how this tendency should manifest itself in presidential approval ratings and test our hypotheses using monthly presidential approval data disaggregated by party identification for the 1955–2005 period. Our results show that partisan groups generally do reward and punish presidents for economic performance, but only those presidents of the opposite party. We also develop a model of presidential approval for self-identified Independents and, finally, a model of the partisan gap , the difference in approval between Democrat and Republican identifiers.     

What's the Value of Partisan Loyalty? Partisan Ambivalence,Motivated Reasoning,and Correct Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections

Partisans vary in the extent to which they rely on their partisan identities when voting. Are partisans who rely less on their partisan loyalties more likely to vote correctly than those who stick with their partisan intuitions? Research on motivated reasoning suggests so, but research focused on the heuristic value of partisanship implies otherwise. We examine this question using evidence from the ANES Time Series (1972–2004) and 2008 ANES Panel Survey. We find that ambivalent partisans, that is, those less reliant on partisanship when deciding, are generally less likely to vote correctly than univalent partisans, that is, those more reliant on partisanship. These results challenge some of the pessimism concerning the democratic competence of partisans as they imply that partisans engaging in directional reasoning can nevertheless perform their duties at the ballot box at least as well, if not better, than those engaged in more systematic and “rational” modes of decision-making.     

Approach motivation and the expansion of self in close relationships

The self‐expansion model posits that individuals are fundamentally motivated to expand their sense of self. It is proposed that approach—but not avoidance—motivation underlies self‐expansion and that approach‐motivated individuals should be especially interested in self‐expanding with a person who provides many novel resources, identities, and perspectives. In Studies 1, 2a, and 2b, correlational evidence that self‐expansion is associated with both relationship‐specific and global measures of approach motivation, but is unrelated to avoidance motivation, was found. In Study 3, experimental evidence that approach motivation increases sensitivity to self‐expansion opportunities, such that individuals high in approach motivation are especially attracted to targets who offer many expansion opportunities and unattracted to targets who offer few expansion opportunities was found. Taken together, these studies provide evidence that self‐expansion is rooted in approach motivation.     

When and How Different Motives Can Drive Motivated Political Reasoning

It is commonly assumed that the effectiveness of political messages depends on people's motivations. Yet, studies of politically motivated reasoning typically only consider what partisans generally might want to believe and do not separately examine the different types of motives that likely underlie these wants. The present research explores the roles of distinct types of motives in politically motivated thinking and identifies the conditions under which motivated reasoners are persuaded by political messages. Results of an experiment with a large, representative sample of Republicans show that manipulations inducing motivations for either (1) forming accurate impressions, (2) affirming moral values, or (3) affirming group identity each increased beliefs in and intentions to combat human-induced climate change, but only when also paired with political messages that are congruent with the induced motivation. We also find no evidence of a backlash effect even when individuals are provided with clearly uncongenial information and a motivation to reject it. Overall, our findings make clear that understanding when and why motivated political reasoning occurs requires a more complete understanding of both which motivations might be active among a group of partisans and how these motivations resonate with the messaging they receive.     

Motivated to Forgive? Partisan Scandals and Party Supporters

In this study, we investigate how partisan motivations shape voters' reactions to a political scandal by drawing on a unique survey experiment fielded immediately after Justin Trudeau's brownface/blackface scandal broke during the 2019 Canadian election. We thus explore motivated reasoning in real time in a competitive and highly partisan election context. Are voters more willing to forgive politicians for past behavior when their own party leader's impropriety is cued? To what extent do personal interests, such as cross-pressures or electoral concerns, affect the motivation to forgive? Our findings show that partisan-motivated reasoning is overwhelmingly powerful, producing politically biased judgments of politicians implicated in scandals. Furthermore, voters' willingness to forgive scandals is also influenced by “strategic” considerations, in that preferences over which political party wins or loses in the election affect opinions about whether someone should be forgiven or whether the scandal is considered important at all. However, we find no evidence that personal involvement in the issue raised by the scandal conditions partisan motivations. We posit that the environment—in this case, a competitive election—is an important consideration for understanding the extent and limits of partisan-motivated reasoning.     

Political Attitudes and the Processing of Misinformation Corrections

Misinformation often continues to influence people’s memory and inferential reasoning after it has been retracted; this is known as the continued influence effect (CIE). Previous research investigating the role of attitude‐based motivated reasoning in this context has found conflicting results: Some studies have found that worldview can have a strong impact on the magnitude of the CIE, such that retractions are less effective if the misinformation is congruent with a person’s relevant attitudes, in which case the retractions can even backfire. Other studies have failed to find evidence for an effect of attitudes on the processing of misinformation corrections. The present study used political misinformation—specifically fictional scenarios involving misconduct by politicians from left‐wing and right‐wing parties—and tested participants identifying with those political parties. Results showed that in this type of scenario, partisan attitudes have an impact on the processing of retractions, in particular (1) if the misinformation relates to a general assertion rather than just a specific singular event and (2) if the misinformation is congruent with a conservative partisanship.     

Dunning–Kruger effects in reasoning: Theoretical implications of the failure to recognize incompetence

The Dunning–Kruger effect refers to the observation that the incompetent are often ill-suited to recognize their incompetence. Here we investigated potential Dunning–Kruger effects in high-level reasoning and, in particular, focused on the relative effectiveness of metacognitive monitoring among particularly biased reasoners. Participants who made the greatest numbers of errors on the cognitive reflection test (CRT) overestimated their performance on this test by a factor of more than 3. Overestimation decreased as CRT performance increased, and those who scored particularly high underestimated their performance. Evidence for this type of systematic miscalibration was also found on a self-report measure of analytic-thinking disposition. Namely, genuinely nonanalytic participants (on the basis of CRT performance) overreported their “need for cognition” (NC), indicating that they were dispositionally analytic when their objective performance indicated otherwise. Furthermore, estimated CRT performance was just as strong a predictor of NC as was actual CRT performance. Our results provide evidence for Dunning–Kruger effects both in estimated performance on the CRT and in self-reported analytic-thinking disposition. These findings indicate that part of the reason why people are biased is that they are either unaware of or indifferent to their own bias.     

Skill Level,Self‐Views and Self‐Theories as Sources of Error in Self‐Assessment

People's impressions of the quality of their performances are often surprisingly inaccurate. In this paper, I discuss three specific factors that contribute to error in self‐assessment. First, at a most basic level, individuals must possess a certain level of knowledge to simply distinguish weak from strong performances. Thus, a lack of skill can contribute to erroneous self‐assessments. Second, even those who possess skill might rely on the wrong information to evaluate their performances. I discuss how relying on preexisting self‐views can lead estimates of one's performance astray. Third, I discuss how motivational forces can play an indirect role in overconfidence. In particular, theories of intelligence that inspire people to think well of themselves also inspire behaviors that contribute to overconfident impressions of how well one has performed on a task. Finally, I discuss how we can draw on this research to improve accuracy in self‐assessments.     

Broadening Horizons: Self‐Expansion in Relational and Non‐Relational Contexts

The self‐expansion model posits that individuals are motivated to broaden their sense of self by acquiring new identities, developing new perspectives, enhancing capabilities, and gaining resources. The self‐expansion motivation is driven by individuals' desire to increase their potential self‐efficacy and ability to accomplish goals. In this article, we discuss two main ways individuals self‐expand – by forming relationships and including the other in the self and through engaging in novel activities that are challenging and/or interesting either on one's own or with a relationship partner. We provide an overview of recent research detailing the numerous interpersonal and intrapersonal benefits and implications of self‐expansion. Additionally, we differentiate self‐expansion from a series of potentially associated constructs.     

Unskilled, unaware, or both? The better-than-average heuristic and statistical regression predict errors in estimates of own performance

People who score low on a performance test overestimate their own performance relative to others, whereas high scorers slightly underestimate their own performance. J. Kruger and D. Dunning (1999) attributed these asymmetric errors to differences in metacognitive skill. A replication study showed no evidence for mediation effects for any of several candidate variables. Asymmetric errors were expected because of statistical regression and the general better-than-average (BTA) heuristic. Consistent with this parsimonious model, errors were no longer asymmetric when either regression or the BTA effect was statistically removed. In fact, high rather than low performers were more error prone in that they were more likely to neglect their own estimates of the performance of others when predicting how they themselves performed relative to the group.     

Dealing with dissonance: responding to an incongruent test result in a new media environment

In a new media environment replete with opportunities to test and express political identity, this study examines how people respond when confronted with a political test result that contradicts their partisan affiliation. An incongruent test result should produce motivated processing, but only when individuals do not dismiss the incongruent result will they experience dissonance and alter their social identification. Using a series of experiments, the results of this study supported these hypotheses. Implications of these findings for political psychology and message response are discussed.     

Changing Parties,Changing Partisans: The Personalization of Partisan Attachments in Western Europe

This article investigates the effects of the deep transformations in the relationship between West European class‐mass parties and their electorates. Particular attention is paid to the changing nature of individuals' partisan attachments, which are hypothesized to be less rooted in social and ideological identities and more in individual attitudes towards increasingly visible partisan objects. The main objective of this article is to examine the influence of voters' attitudes towards one of these “objects”—the party leaders—in determining psychological attachments with the parties. The analysis concentrates on the two main cleavage‐based parties in Britain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. The empirical findings highlight the declining ability of social identities (class and religious) to predict individual feelings of partisan attachment, as well as the growing influence of voters' attitudes towards party leaders. The concluding section points to the crucial role that political psychology can play in our understanding of democratic elections' outcomes.     

On the Independent Roles of Cognitive & Political Sophistication: Variation Across Attitudinal Objects

People are motivated to maintain consistency between importantly held identities, preferences, and judgments. In political contexts, motivated reasoning can help explain a wide range of political phenomena, including extremism, polarization, and misperceptions. However, recent findings in psychology have challenged this account. These perspectives emphasize the role of cognitive sophistication (e.g., analytical reasoning, numerical literacy) in political attitudes, but differ in terms of whether it is expected to attenuate or exacerbate politically motivated reasoning and belief in conspiracy theories. Yet prior investigations have not examined the relative and independent effects of both political and cognitive sophistication. Using data from two samples, including one sampled to approximate representativeness in the U.S., we demonstrate that both types of sophistication have independent and (at times) countervailing effects on belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories and other political attitudes. Our results are critical for theories of cognitive sophistication, political cognition, and attitudes, and the psychology of conspiracy theories.     

Human Values and Social Identities among Samples of White and Black South Africans

We examined the value correlates of different social identities among two groups of South Africans, those identifying themselves as white Afrikaners or as black South Africans. Respondents indicated the importance of their membership of different groups and also completed indices of National strength and order, and International harmony and equality. Multiple regression analyses showed that the social identities associated with both values for self‐identified Afrikaners were mainly linked with ethnic language (Afrikaans) and religion. Among self‐identified black South Africans, however, the social identities were more encompassing, including the notion of global citizen and South African. The findings are discussed in the light of ongoing political and social change in South Africa and the nature of changing identities, as well as the role of cultural symbols in facilitating in‐group identification among white Afrikaners.     

A Law of One's Own: Self‐Legislation and Radical Kantian Constructivism

Radical constructivists appeal to self‐legislation in arguing that rational agents are the ultimate sources of normative authority over themselves. I chart the roots of radical constructivism and argue that its two leading Kantian proponents are unable to defend an account of self‐legislation as the fundamental source of practical normativity without this legislation collapsing into a fatal arbitrariness. Christine Korsgaard cannot adequately justify the critical resources which agents use to navigate their practical identities. This leaves her account riven between rigorism and voluntarism, such that it will not escape a paradox that arises when self‐legislation is unable to appeal to external normative standards. Onora O'Neill anchors self‐legislation more firmly to the self‐disciplining structures of reason itself. However, she ultimately fails to defend sufficiently unconditional practical norms which could guide legislation. These endemic problems with radical constructivist models of self‐legislation prompt a reconstruction of a neglected realist self‐legislative tradition which is exemplified by Christian Wolff. In outlining a rationalist and realist account of self‐legislation, I argue that it can also make sense of our ability to overcome anomie and deference in practical action. Thus, I claim that we need not make laws but can make them our own.