Partisan bias in opinion formation on episodes of political controversy: evidence from Great Britain

Wagner, Markus; Tarlov, Jessie; Vivyan, Nick

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.01002.x

Partisan bias in opinion formation on episodes of political controversy: evidence from Great Britain

Wagner, Markus; Tarlov, Jessie; Vivyan, Nick

Authors

Markus Wagner

Jessie Tarlov

Professor Nick Vivyan nick.vivyan@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Voters form judgements about political controversies through a process of motivated reasoning driven by two goals: the desire to reach an objectively accurate conclusion (accuracy) and the desire to reach a conclusion congruent with pre-existing views (direction). The impact of directional goals may depend on political sophistication. We test our hypotheses using data from a 2011 British survey that measured voters' opinions on three specific real-life political controversies. We use voters' underlying tolerance of political misconduct as an indicator of accuracy goals and party identification as a measure of directional goals. We find that partisan predispositions and tolerance of political misconduct are both important in shaping voter opinions and that partisanship has the strongest influence among the more knowledgeable and interested voters. These findings further our understanding of how voters react to political controversies and how they process new political information.

Citation

Wagner, M., Tarlov, J., & Vivyan, N. (2014). Partisan bias in opinion formation on episodes of political controversy: evidence from Great Britain. Political Studies, 62(1), 136-158. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.01002.x

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Apr 19, 2012
Publication Date	Mar 1, 2014
Deposit Date	Apr 23, 2012
Publicly Available Date	Nov 30, 2015
Journal	Political Studies
Print ISSN	0032-3217
Electronic ISSN	1467-9248
Publisher	Political Studies Association
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	62
Issue	1
Pages	136-158
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.01002.x
Keywords	Partisanship, Scandals, Opinion formation, Political ethics, Motivated reasoning.

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Copyright Statement
This is the accepted version of the following article: Wagner, M., Tarlov, J. and Vivyan, N. (2014), Partisan Bias in Opinion Formation on Episodes of Political Controversy: Evidence from Great Britain. Political Studies, 62(1): 136-158, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.01002.x. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.