MOTIVATED REASONING MOTIVATED REASONING What is motivated reasoning

MOTIVATED REASONING

MOTIVATED REASONING • What is motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990)? • Other terms: motivated social cognition, biased assimilation • Why do people do it? (needs) • How (what processes) do they use to do it? • What are some examples? • How does society support motivated reasoning?

VOTING BEHAVIOR • What affects how people vote? • Why do people sometimes vote against their policy preferences? • https: //www. nytimes. com/2020/09/10/upshot/voters-trump-virusprojection. html (Guntermann, Lenz, & Agadjanian, 2020) % agreeing Govt should do more to protect Americans from virus 70 Govt should do more testing 65 Masks should be required in public 69 Nonessential businesses should close to slow spread 49 US should be part of WHO 51

ANOTHER POSSIBLE REASON-PROJECTION • 40% place Biden as more supportive on masks • 47% place Biden as more supportive of WHO • 81% of Trump supporters who believe masks should be required think that Trump agrees with them • 75% of Trump supporters who support closing nonessential businesses believe he agrees • 70% of Trump supporters who support WHO membership believe he agrees

WASHBURN & SKITKA, 2017 • Two competing hypotheses • Asymmetry hypothesis (Jost) • • Conservatives more biased Symmetry hypothesis (Brandt, Chambers, Skitka) • Liberals and conservatives are both biased, just depends on toward what

RELATED RESEARCH • Integrated model of racism (Nail, Harton, Dovidio, Gaertner) • • Conservatives show more modern racism Liberals show more aversive racism Liberals and conservatives both show prejudice toward Black Americans, but in different ways. Other research also shows that both are prejudiced explicitly, but toward different groups (e. g. , Wetherell, Brandt, & Reyna, 2013).

• Responses to threat (Jost, but see Eadeh, Pieper, Harton) • • Terrorism/safety threats make people lean more conservative Environmental threats make people lean more liberal

• Moral foundations model (Haidt, but see Zubrod, Lewey, Harton) • • • Harm-care Fairness-reciprocity Ingroup-loyalty Authority-respect Purity-sanctity (Liberty-oppression)

Conservatives and Liberals Differing Perceptions of Items on the Moral Foundations Questionnaire: Maybe We’re Not so Different After All Nathan Lewey, Alivia Zubrod, & Helen C. Harton University of Northern Iowa ● ●○ ○ ○ Method Participants: 201 m. Turk, 233 undergraduate students; 54% Female; Political Orientation: 24% Liberal, 26% Moderate, 24. 2% Conservative, 25. 8% Missing Measures: (online Qualtrics survey) Demographics (e. g. , political affiliation and orientation, gender) Moral Foundations Questionnaire (Graham et al. , 2011) Our modified moral foundations items (some adapted from the Three Domains of Disgust Scale (Olatunji, 2012) and Clifford’s Vignettes (Clifford, 2015) Five Moral Foundations Vignettes (Royzman, 2014); hypothetical violations of autonomy, community, and divinity Portrait Values Questionnaire (PVQ-21; Schwartz, 2001; a =. 63) ● ● ● MFQ Examples: In-group/Loyalty: Whether or not someone’s action showed love for his or her country. Purity/Sanctity: Whether or not someone acted in a way that God would approve of. Fairness/Reciprocity: I think it’s morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot of money while poor children inherit nothing. Authority/Respect: If I were a soldier and disagreed with my commanding officer’s orders, I would obey anyway because that is my duty. Harm/Care: It can never be right to kill a human being. ● ● ● Modified Examples: In-group/Loyalty: Whether or not someone speaks badly about their community. Purity/Sanctity: Whether or not someone acted in a way that their conscience would approve of. Fairness/Reciprocity: I would accept employment if I was hired only because my father knows the boss. Authority/Respect: If my boss tells me how to complete a task, and I know an alternative method, I do what my boss says. Harm/Care: Hitting your dog when it disobeys is a way to correct its behavior.

BACK TO THE STUDY YOU READ… • What did they do? • Strengths and limitations? • What did they find? • • People’s interpretation of data People’s response to the correct interpretation (science denial)

OTHER EVIDENCE • • Bias occurs for liberals and conservatives (heading ratings; Facciani, 2020) • Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979 biased assimilation • https: //theconversation. com/video-how-did-mask-wearing-become-so-politicized 144268 • • https: //journals. sagepub. com/doi/pdf/10. 1177/1745691617746796 Recent meta-analysis: equal partisan bias (biased assimilation) for liberals and conservatives (Ditto et al. , 2019) http: //fbaum. unc. edu/teaching/articles/jpsp-1979 -Lord-Ross-Lepper. pdf

ATTITUDE ROOTS (HORNSEY & FIELDING, 2017) • What their approach to attitude change? • What are the “roots” they mention? (Table 1) • What else are these concepts similar to? • Are there any roots they left off?

ROOTS EXAMPLES • What are some other examples of these? • White supremacists and genetic testing https: //www. pbs. org/newshour/science/white-supremacists-respond-geneticssay-theyre-not-white • COVID

• How do you change attitudes, according to this approach? • What do they mean by “jiu-jitsu” persuasion? • How is this approach similar or different to that in pre-suasion? • Which roots are associated with political orientation? Are there others that might affect some people or some issues more than others? • How do you know what root to target? • Do these roots affect scientists too? (Reinero et al. , 2020)

CRITIQUES • What is the Tryon critique? Do you agree? • And their response to it? • Are these roots unconscious?

USING THE ROOTS

NEXT WEEK • Not Born Yesterday (Intro and chapters 1 -7) • Submit a description of what you’ve collected for your project thus far • https: //my 2020 census. gov/ • Remember to vote!