Stagnaro Michael Nicholas, Amsalem Eran
Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
Department of Communication and Journalism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Nat Commun. 2025 Apr 23;16(1):3809. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-58697-3.
It is commonly argued that factual knowledge about a political issue increases attitude polarization due to politically motivated reasoning. By this account, individuals ignore counter-attitudinal facts and direct their attention to pro-attitudinal facts; reject counter-attitudinal facts when directly confronted with them; and use pro-attitudinal facts to counterargue, all making them more polarized. The observation that more knowledgeable partisans are often more polarized is widely taken as support for this account. Yet these data are only correlational. Here, we directly test the causal effect of increasing issue-relevant knowledge on attitude polarization. Specifically, we randomize whether N = 1,011 participants receive a large, credible set of both pro- and counter-attitudinal facts on a contentious political issue - gun control - and provide a modest incentive for them to learn this information. We find evidence that people are willing to engage with and learn policy-relevant facts both for and against their initial attitudes; and that this increased factual knowledge shifts individuals towards more moderate policy attitudes, a durable effect that is still visible after one month. Our results suggest that the impact of directionally motivated reasoning on the processing of political information might be more limited than previously thought.
人们普遍认为，由于出于政治动机的推理，关于政治问题的事实性知识会加剧态度两极分化。根据这种说法，个人会忽略与自己态度相悖的事实，而将注意力转向支持自己态度的事实；在直接面对与自己态度相悖的事实时予以拒绝；并利用支持自己态度的事实进行反驳，所有这些都会使他们更加两极分化。更有知识的党派人士往往更加两极分化这一观察结果被广泛视为对这种说法的支持。然而，这些数据只是相关性的。在这里，我们直接测试增加与问题相关的知识对态度两极分化的因果效应。具体来说，我们随机安排N = 1011名参与者是否收到关于一个有争议的政治问题——枪支管制——的大量、可信的支持和反对态度的事实，并适度激励他们去了解这些信息。我们发现，人们愿意接触并学习与他们最初态度支持和反对的政策相关事实；而且这种增加的事实性知识会使个人转向更温和的政策态度，这种持久的效果在一个月后仍然可见。我们的结果表明，出于方向性动机的推理对政治信息处理的影响可能比之前认为的更有限。
