No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning‐Kruger Effect
Abstract
A widely cited finding in social psychology holds that individuals with low levels of competence will judge themselves to be higher achieving than they really are. In the present study, I examine how the so‐called “Dunning‐Kruger effect” conditions citizens' perceptions of political knowledgeability. While low performers on a political knowledge task are expected to engage in overconfident self‐placement and self‐assessment when reflecting on their performance, I also expect the increased salience of partisan identities to exacerbate this phenomenon due to the effects of directional motivated reasoning. Survey experimental results confirm the Dunning‐Kruger effect in the realm of political knowledge. They also show that individuals with moderately low political expertise rate themselves as increasingly politically knowledgeable when partisan identities are made salient. This below‐average group is also likely to rely on partisan source cues to evaluate the political knowledge of peers. In a concluding section, I comment on the meaning of these findings for contemporary debates about rational ignorance, motivated reasoning, and political polarization.
... Various studies (e.g., Anson, 2018;Dunning, 2011;Kruger & Dunning, 1999) indicate that people tend to think of themselves as being more politically knowledgeable than they really are. This relates to a well-known effect, studied in social psychology and tested more recently in political research -the Dunning-Kruger effect -which refers in short to individuals with low levels of competence who judge themselves to be better achievers than they really are, while those with high levels of competence underestimate their excellence (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). ...
... The Dunning-Kruger effect occurs because individuals vary in their awareness of 'known unknowns' (which lays within an individual's awareness) and 'unknown unknowns' (concepts, skills, or experiences that individuals are unaware of) (Anson, 2018). Consequently, unprepared or ignorant people are unaware of the extent of their ignorance or their lack of skills (Everson & Tobias, 1998). ...
... Other studies have demonstrated that individuals' overconfident self-assessments are a reality and not a mere product of how statistical tests are run or of which knowledge scales are applied (Schlösser et al., 2013). Furthermore, empirical evidence confirms a Dunning-Kruger effect existing in the realm of political knowledge (Anson, 2018;Schlösser et al., 2013). This phenomenon has serious consequences for political knowledge in general, because it influences, for instance, the perceived utility of engaging in political discussion (David, 2009) or the chances of adopting extreme positions in terms of ideology (Ortoleva & Snowberg, 2015). ...
As they approach voting age, young people aged 17 to 19 years old are at a significant turning point in their political development. In this formative stage, their perceptions and understanding of the political landscape depend, among other things, on the diversity of information sources and content to which they are exposed to on a daily basis. In such a context, political knowledge plays a key role in informed decision-making for first-time voters. However, many young people tend to overestimate their levels of political knowledge, a phenomenon explained by the Dunning-Kruger effect. This study examines factors influencing both factual and perceived political knowledge among Romanian high school students (N=519). The main findings reveal a significant discrepancy between the actual political knowledge of young people and their perceived understanding of political matters. Political efficacy (the belief in one’s ability to understand and engage in politics) proves to be a strong predictor of both factual and perceived political knowledge. Those with high levels of political efficacy are not only more informed but also believe they know more about politics than their peers. Furthermore, results show that young people who believe they know more than their peers about political affairs consume more mainstream media news, but no other correlation of political knowledge with news consumption is significant. Additionally, while male students perceive themselves as more knowledgeable than females, no significant gender differences in factual knowledge were observed. These findings highlight the need for educational strategies to improve both political knowledge and efficacy, contributing to a more informed and participatory youth electorate in Romania.
... Overconfident citizens also tend to make strong political claims and resist persuasive counterarguments (I. G. Anson, 2018;Benegal & Motta, 2022). These processes may reinforce individuals' confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, depriving cross-cutting discussion of its proper deliberative role. ...
... This metacognitive deficit leads individuals to overestimate themselves while underestimating others, leading to overconfidence (I. G. Anson, 2018). ...
... In the political arena, voters with extreme partisan positions are more likely to exaggerate their knowledge, claiming to know something well when it does not even exist (van Prooijen & Krouwel, 2020). I. G. Anson (2018) systematically examined the Dunning-Kruger effect and measured the level of political overconfidence among American citizens. His results showed that people may not know much about political institutions or political events, but the extent to which they generally believe they have above-average political knowledge relative to their peers is significant. ...
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes how poor performers overestimate their abilities while top performers underestimate their abilities. This study explores whether this effect explains the ineffectiveness of cross-cutting discussions in reducing affective polarization. We propose a moderated mediation model in which the relationship between cross-cutting discussion (wave 1) and affective polarization (wave 2) is mediated by oppositional responses to disagreements, and this indirect relationship, specifically between cross-cutting discussion and opposition responses, is moderated by political overconfidence. Analyzing panel data from a two-wave online survey, the results suggest that the Dunning-Kruger effect is widespread in political knowledge and influences social media users’ behaviors and attitudes. Specifically, for example, those who are more overconfident engage in cross-cutting discussions, have more oppositional responses (e.g., posting criticisms or clicking “dislike”), and thus become more affectively polarized. This suggests that correcting the public’s perceived bias about their level of political knowledge may help reduce affective polarization.
... Indeed, YouTube offers passive news consumption, along with distracting elements that have been evidenced to hold a notable link to erroneous perceptions about knowledge (Gil de Z� uñiga et al., 2017;Ran et al., 2016). More incisively, partisan news content, being readily accessible through YouTube with its customizability (Dylko et al., 2018), can fuel this overconfidence by making partisan identities salient (Anson, 2018). Along this line of reasoning, we aim to investigate how partisan YouTube use can paint citizens' biased evaluations of their own as well as others' knowledge. ...
... More specifically, we envision that partisan content widespread on YouTube can swell users' confidence about their capacity to comprehend political matters. On this particular note, Anson (2018) documented that exposure to partisan cues can induce self-aggrandization of knowledge by priming partisan identities. He explained that the impact of partisan content on overconfidence is primarily due to partisanmotivated reasoning, i.e., the tendency to form a particular conclusion when partisan identities are made salient (Taber & Lodge, 2006). ...
... When directional goals are in action, people are likely motivated to maintain a "preferred world state" (p. 1176), which can manifest in the form of a favorable assessment of themselves i.e., they are more knowledgeable than they actually are (Anson, 2018). In contrast, studies have affirmed that exposure to partisan content can translate into ill-informed citizenry, whether uninformed or disinformed, as directional goals are liable to hinder more balanced accumulation of concrete knowledge (Prior et al., 2015;Taber & Lodge, 2006). ...
This study investigates how partisan YouTube use can paint biased evaluations of one’s own as well as others’ knowledge. Understanding of these relationships is enriched by a fresh theoretical perspective via the Dunning–Kruger effect, suggesting that people, especially those who perform poorly, tend to overestimate their own competence. Using South Korea and the United States as two different contexts, we also attend to how cultures moderate these relationships. Findings based on two independent surveys in these countries shed light on the role of partisan YouTube use in shaping people’s hyperbolic self-evaluations and contrasted assessments of in- and out-group members. Furthermore, these trends are more pronounced among those with relatively a low level of actual knowledge. Finally, using partisan YouTube for news is strongly associated with group-based evaluations of knowledge in Korea, whereas it yields significant relationships only with self-evaluations of knowledge in the United States.
... To fill this research gap and explain the divided and conflicting political views in our society in terms of selective exposure and disproportionate preference for content aligned with people's existing political orientations, current research is examining the role of political knowledge. Previous research has shown discrepancies between users' perceptions of their level of knowledge and their actual level (Anson, 2018;Kim and Lee, 2020;Ryan, 2011). Quote from "As You Like It" by William Shakespeare -"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."best ...
... Although the findings of social psychology and political science suggest that people with low abilities do not know that their abilities lag behind others (ignorance of ignorance) until they get a reason for objective measurement and mistakenly judge that their knowledge level is higher (Anson, 2018;Helzer and Dunning, 2012;Hodges et al., 2001), none of the researchers investigated how people's overestimation of their own political knowledge later influenced their decisions and behavior. People's inability to recognize and accurately assess the quality of their own abilities leads to detrimental consequences such as political extremism (Fernbach et al., 2013;Raimi and Leary, 2014) and conspiracy theories (Vitriol and Marsh, 2018); as such, understanding behavioral outcomes beyond self-assessment is critical. ...
... In our research, the difference between the two measures serves as an indicator of biased perceptions of political knowledge (Anson, 2018;Kruger and Dunning, 1999). Specifically, we created an index of biased perceptions of political knowledge by subtracting objective scores from subjective scores. ...
Purpose
In the face of increasing political polarization worldwide, this study explores whether people create biased perceptions of political knowledge and how this affects their selection and evaluation of political content on YouTube.
Design/methodology/approach
For this study, an online experiment was conducted with 441 panels of South Korean respondents. In the first phase, participants answered 10 questions designed to capture their level of objective political knowledge, and for each question, they indicated whether they had responded to that question correctly as a means of measuring their subjective political knowledge. In the second phase, two types of YouTube thumbnails were presented to represent progressive and conservative claims on two controversial political issues, and participants rated and selected the content they would like to see.
Findings
Participants with low political knowledge perceived their knowledge as more than it really was. In contrast, participants with high political knowledge perceived their political knowledge as less than it really was. This biased perception of political knowledge influences respondents' choice and evaluation of political YouTube channel videos.
Originality/value
At a time when political polarization is increasing around the world, this study sought to explore how perceptions of political knowledge differ from actual political knowledge by applying the Dunning-Kruger effect. The authors also used political YouTube channels, whose role in forming public opinion and political influence is rapidly growing, to study the behavior and attitudes of a group of Korean respondents in the media according to their actual and perceived level of political literacy.
... The DK effect has been studied in various fields, such as mathematics and statistics (Hosein & Harle, 2018;Magnus & Peresetsky, 2022), computing (Gibbs et al., 2017), chemistry (MacNeil et al., 2024, economics, business (Feld et al., 2017;Sawler, 2021), financial literacy (Balasubramnian & Sargent, 2020;Gignac, 2022), health (Scheiber et al., 2023;Surdilović et al., 2022), accidents (Surdilović et al., 2022), information literacy (Jin et al., 2020;Mahmood, 2016;Nierenberg & Dahl, 2023), social psychology (Anson, 2018), and sports coaching ability (Sullivan et al., 2019). Alongside research confirming the DK effect, several studies are exploring its limitations. ...
... Several empirical studies have examined the performance of high school and university students (Anson, 2018;de Bruin et al., 2017;Gonda, 2022;Nierenberg & Dahl, 2023). In higher education, researchers typically engage in survey research pertaining to the bachelor's and master's degree levels (Kun, 2016;Nepal & Kafle, 2024). ...
The impact of cognitive biases, particularly biased self-assessment, on learning outcomes and decision-making in higher education is of great significance. This study delves into the confluence of cognitive biases and user experience in spreadsheet programming as a crucial IT skill across various academic disciplines. Through a quantitative analysis, we investigate whether structured learning in spreadsheet programming can counteract self-assessment biases among higher education students. Specifically, our focus is on scrutinizing the accuracy of self-assessment in Excel proficiency among professional STEM students at the University of Debrecen, Hungary, by comparing traditional written and digital assessments. Our findings reveal that while high-achieving students tend to exhibit more accurate self-assessments, many students have a pervasive tendency to overestimate their spreadsheet competencies. These results emphasize the necessity for educational strategies that acknowledge cognitive biases in self-assessment, with far-reaching implications for curriculum design and lean management in higher education, by integrating evidence-based approaches to enhance digital competencies. This study makes a valuable contribution to the broader dialogue on improving learning outcomes and user experience in spreadsheet programming. Additionally, the research provides valuable insights for educators and policymakers, advocating for pedagogical adjustments that can assist students in better evaluating their skills and knowledge, thereby promoting more precise self-assessment practices.
... Past research has indicated that the pattern of the Dunning-Kruger effect can also be found in the context of political knowledge. In two online survey studies with adults (N = 1,047 and N = 1,559), respondents completed a political knowledge quiz with five questions and were subsequently asked to provide a self-assessment of their mastery of the knowledge battery (Anson, 2018). The results demonstrated that low performers tended to overestimate, while high performers tended to underestimate their political knowledge. ...
... We hypothesize that the pattern of findings typical of the Dunning-Kruger effect is present in Grade 7 and Grade 10 with regard to political knowledge. Prior research suggests that the Dunning-Kruger effect can be found for political knowledge, too (Anson, 2018;Rapeli, 2023). While this prior evidence is based on adult samples and employs more less comprehensive measures of political knowledge, we nonetheless assume that we will find the Dunning-Kruger effect among high school students. ...
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes that low performers tend to overestimate and high performers tend to underestimate their ability and that on average low performers provide less accurate estimates of their ability than high performers. Based on data from N = 1,047 students in Grade 7 (n = 613) and Grade 10 (n = 434), we examined whether the Dunning-Kruger effect exists with regard to high school students’ political knowledge, whether the effect is different in Grade 7 and Grade 10, and how teachers’ behavior (i.e., cognitively activating and motivating teaching) affects students’ judgement accuracy and judgement direction. The results show that the Dunning-Kruger effect exists in both grade levels. Furthermore, visual and statistical examination of the data suggest that the pattern of data is very similar in both grade levels. Finally, we further find that perceived motivational quality is associated with judgement accuracy, but also with overconfidence. Perceived cognitive activation is negatively associated with judgement accuracy. Through the usage of two-cohort data, this study applies a novel approach and bears important implications for research on the Dunning-Kruger effect. Furthermore, the results regarding the teachers’ behavior provide important insights for educational practice in civic education.
... However, according to the Dunning Kruger Effect (Kruger & Dunning, 1999), the individuals who lack skill or knowledge, overestimate their skill and ability, and struggle to recognize when their knowledge and expertise have reached their limits. The Dunning Kruger Effect has been observed in a wide range of contexts and cognitive areas: from university debate teams' performances, gun club members' knowledge of firearms (Ehrlinger et al., 2008), to Americans' political knowledge (Anson, 2018), sports coaches' strategy and teaching ability (Sullivan et al., 2019), training of police officers (Kristjánsson, 2022), teaching macroeconomics students (Sawler, 2021) and individuals' self-assessment of racism and sexism (West & Eaton, 2019). In general, people who are less competent or skilled tend to overestimate their talent and ability (Dunning et al., 2003). ...
... Overconfident individuals tend to have lower intentions to question themselves and to seek new knowledge. They often resist counterarguments and insist on their beliefs (Anson, 2018). As individuals who overestimate their abilities tend to underestimate a task, overconfident doctoral students may put less effort into their research process, jeopardizing research quality (Folk, 2016;Vancouver et al., 2001;Verhaeren, 2012). ...
There are many erroneous but pervasive ‘truths’ about tourism. This study assesses individuals' capacity to question these myths alongside their self-perceptions of their critical thinking skills. The research used a survey with 1493 respondents from 22 universities across 16 countries/territories to test the Dunning Kruger effect, which suggests an inverse relationship between self-belief and competence. The data provides strong evidence of the Dunning Kruger effect insofar as those more likely to believe in tourism myths also had a greater tendency to overestimate their capabilities, and vice versa. We discuss the possible causes and the implications for tourism education, identifying potential interventions at different points along learners' developmental journeys to help ensure a more sustainable future for tourism scholarship and practice.
... This brief index established a standard for measuring knowledge that has served to guide most scholars and enshrined a definition of political knowledge that focuses almost exclusively on electoral and institutional processes. This focus on political knowledge as the rules of government operations and the identification of political leaders is evident across most examinations of the concept, whether U.S. based or international (DeSante and Perry 2016; Fraile 2011; Hebbelstrup and Rasmussen 2016;Ryan 2011) and whether research seeks to explain political knowledge (Bramlett 2013;Garz 2017;Henderson 2014;Macdonald 2019;Weinschenk and Dawes 2019) or use knowledge as an explanatory variable in work on political behavior (Anson 2018;Miller, Saunders, and Farhart 2016;Ondercin and Jones-White 2011;Ripberger et al. 2012;Ryan 2011). ...
... For comparison, we also consider three standard measures of political knowledge included in the common core content of the CES-asking respondents to name the party currently holding the majority in the House of Representatives as well as the Senate. We also consider whether respondents correctly place the Republican party on an ideological scale as more conservative than the Democratic party, another measure often used as part of a traditional battery alongside specific factual knowledge measures (Anson 2018, Macdonald 2019, Ryan 2011. ...
Gender differences in political knowledge are a well-known empirical finding in public opinion research. Scholars working in this area have proposed various explanations for this phenomenon, often focusing on issues regarding the format and content of factual knowledge batteries. Yet, there are surprisingly few works that focus on how scholars might diversify the content of political knowledge measures to develop items that are less biased toward male areas of expertise. In this paper, we propose an inductive framework to develop more gender-balanced knowledge batteries by including political issues that are of particular relevance to women and women’s lives. Employing gender-balanced measures of political knowledge reveal instances where women and men demonstrate equivalent levels of political knowledge and higher levels of political interest and efficacy among women—engagement that is often masked by conventional measures of knowledge.
... It is a cognitive bias in which individuals with low levels of competence (in this context, those new to using ChatGPT) tend to overestimate their own abilities (leading to admiration and belief in ChatGPT's credibility and seemingly superhuman capabilitieseliciting a 'wow' reaction). Conversely, individuals with high levels of competence tend to underestimate their relative abilities (like those who now possess better knowledge about ChatGPT, acknowledging its potential to enhance productivity while also recognising the limitations of its information and the need to avoid complete reliance on it) (Anson, 2018;Muller et al., 2021). ...
The concept of 'intelligence' used to differ between human and machines, until the disruption of artificial intelligence (AI). The field of AI is advancing far more rapidly than the establishment of rules and regulations, which is causing certain fear. However, slowing down this progression to avoid economic crisis is not an option because of open-source AI, which facilitates faster development processes and collective contributions to codes and algorithms. Public policies, such as the 'European Union AI Act (EU AI)', 'Whitehouse AI', and the G7's 'Hiroshima Artificial Intelligence Process' (HAP), are already drafted. Regulators need to adopt a dynamic approach given AI's rapid advancement, and they need to eventually strive for international harmonisation in their rules and regulations for better collaborations. The EU's AI Act is the 'world's first comprehensive law' and it focuses on five main pillars similar to other countries drafts: ensuring AI usage is safe, transparent, traceable, non-discriminatory and environmentally friendly. They portray four risk categories against which citizens can file complaints: (1) Unacceptable risk (2) High risk (3) Generative AI (4) Limited risk. The US AI policies include 'The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: pioneering draft laws while providing recommendations on ethics and responsible AI. The contribution of this study is that it sheds light on the evolving evolution of AI and the challenges posed by the rapid advancement of AI technology, emphasising the necessity for flexible and adaptive regulatory frameworks. This is the first paper to explore AI from the academic and political perspective.
... Recent research indicates that attitude confidence plays an important role in people's perceptions and opinion formation (e.g., see Anson, 2018, for a discussion). Confident yet uninformed individuals might be less likely to accept new information even in high-uncertainty situations whereas people aware of the limitations of their own knowledge might be more likely to recognize that they lack accurate information to have an informed opinion (Anson, 2018). Thus, we controlled for global attitude confidence by entering it as a covariate into the model. ...
... In addition to the well-known problems of studying the Dunning-Kruger effect, a number of researchers pay attention to the knowledge factor that political competence depends on the quality of political knowledge, its level of limitation and breadth of coverage (Anson, 2018), even those with skills can rely on incorrect information when evaluating their actions (Ehrlinger, 2008), confidence is closely related to the total time it takes to obtain specific information, and this relationship is inversely proportional (Çatalbaş, 2020), problem-solving is the brain's metacognitive process, consisting of its cognitive processes of abstraction, search, learning, decision-making, inference, analysis, and synthesis (Acosta at el., 2020), experienced experts not only give more accurate assessments of various situations than novice experts, and also give more accurate estimates of the accuracy of their assessments (Acosta at el., 2020), meta-ignorance will always be there until people know everything (Huang, 2013). Regardless of the level of intelligence (Small, and Holt, 2021), bad performers tend to be doubly doomed: they lack knowledge of the material and are unaware of what knowledge they have and what they don't (Miller, and Geraci, 2011). ...
The monograph titled "Digital Transformations of Society: Problems of Law" by Oleksandr Baranov et al. is a comprehensive investigation into the legal, social, and ethical ramifications of the rapid integration of digital technologies into various facets of human, societal, and state activities. This pivotal work delineates the theoretical and methodological underpinnings essential for crafting and reforming legal frameworks to adeptly govern the burgeoning types of social relations engendered by digital advancements. It scrutinizes the pressing challenges and prospects of digital transformation, underscoring the critical necessity for legal support in mitigating the complexities of modern decision-making processes and fostering large-scale social transformations.
The monograph is structured into four enlightening chapters that explore the intricate interplay between legal norms and digital innovations, such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and Web 3.0 technologies. It articulates the urgent need for legal systems to evolve in tandem with digital and social transformations, advocating for a "results-based economy" facilitated by Internet of Things technologies to ensure sustainable and high-quality life standards globally.
Furthermore, the work extends its analytical purview to the Metaverse, addressing the legal, technical, and ethical considerations for AI application within this burgeoning virtual realm. It highlights the lagging development and implementation of Metaverse technologies in Ukraine, compared to global strides, emphasizing the significant potential these technologies hold for the nation's development and recovery.
Moreover, the monograph delves into the ethical dimensions of AI and robotics development, supported by an empirical study of over 80 Codes of Ethical Principles. This section illuminates the evolving regulatory focus from hardware to software, spotlighting the ethical imperatives of fairness, responsibility, and accountability in technology implementation.
In sum, "Digital Transformations of Society: Problems of Law" presents a visionary perspective on the necessity for a holistic legal and ethical overhaul to adeptly navigate and harness the potentials of digital transformation. It calls for a concerted effort among governments, the private sector, and international bodies to forge comprehensive strategies that address the multifaceted challenges and opportunities presented by the digital age, ensuring a future that harmonizes technological innovation with ethical and legal integrity.
... This question likewise benefits from a differentiated scale and was asked prior to the treatment. However, it rests on self-assessment, which limits the validity of the measurement to some extent (see Anson, 2018). ...
... This exhibits the paradoxical nature of metacognition that ignorant people are also more unaware of their own ignorance. Despite some criticisms regarding the reality of this phenomenon (e.g., Gignac and Zajenkowski, 2020), recent research shows that the Dunning-Kruger effect is also applicable to rigidity/dogmatism, prejudice, and extremism (Anson, 2018). West and Eaton (2019) argued that the Dunning-Kruger effect is also valid for the self-awareness of their own racism and sexism, demonstrating that those with stronger racist and sexist views also tend to disavow their prejudice more. ...
In South Korea, anti-feminism is now rapidly spreading online among young men, who have started to identify themselves as a social minority or “victims” of female power. Despite its ramifications, theoretically, anti-feminism is indistinct from the racism and sexism of White men that emerged more than half a century ago. In view of this, it shares the same root as typical modern racism or sexism, although it appears to be a novel phenomenon. Such a hypothesis was buttressed by quantifying the attitudes of anti-feminists toward various outgroups based on the transference of prejudice theory. Moreover, the subtle sexist undertones hidden in their arguments have been discussed using various psychological theories and empirical data/statistics. Additionally, various potential factors that may shape or accelerate their attitudes or behaviors have been discussed on the basis of the threat-defense theory. Through comprehensive literature review based on this theory, this study proposes the features related to Korean anti-feminism, encompassing behavioral/situational (overindulging violent or degrading Internet contents, verbal aggression), relational/epistemic (ostracism, attachment insecurity, pseudo-rationalism), and group-level (provocative interactions, polarization) attributes, some of which may also influence groups other than young men and ingrain or exacerbate the extreme ideologies of other groups, including young women. Scrutinizing Korean online anti-feminism and male-victim ideology may improve our understanding of the psychological origins of various social extremities or radical ideologies beyond cultural barriers.
... Крім загальновідомих проблем дослідження ефекту Даннінга-Крюгера ряд дослідників звертає увагу на фактор знань: політична компетентність залежить від якості політичних знань, від їхнього рівня обмеженості та широти охоплення [2], навіть ті, хто має навички, можуть покладатися на неправильну інформацію при оцінці своїх дій [15], впевненість тісно пов'язана із загальним часом, який потрібний для отримання конкретної інформації, і цей зв'язок обернено пропорційний [9], вирішення проблемце метакогнітивний процес мозку, що складається з їх когнітивних процесів абстракції, пошуку, навчання, прийняття рішень, висновку, аналізу та синтезу [52], досвідчені експерти не тільки дають більш точні оцінки різних ситуацій, ніж експерти-новачки, але й дають більш точні оцінки точності своїх оцінок [1], мета-невігластво буде завжди, поки люди не знатимуть всього [20], ефект Даннінга-Крюгера може статися з кожним, незалежно від рівня його інтелекту [42], погані виконавці в цілому прокляті подвійно: їм не вистачає знання матеріалу, і вони не усвідомлюють, які вони мають знання і які не мають [29]. ...
The nature of the emergence of the need to introduce computers, introduce digital technologies and conduct digital transformations is analyzed. It is proposed to consider digital transformation as a response to civilizational challenges, the essence of which is reduced to the existence of civilizational cognitive contradictions of mankind. It is the presence of civilizational cognitive contradictions that is a prerequisite for the systemic adoption of wrong decisions, the unrestrained accumulation of which is the source of degradation of civilization. An understanding of the civilizational mission of digital transformation has been formed.
... This knowledge includes familiarity with the political system and its institution's knowledge of political and legal figures (Lestari and Arumsasi, 2018) and the ability to make informed political choices for political interests (Stockemer and Rocher, 2016). Political knowledge directs individuals to engage in political actions, including voting in elections (Anson, 2018;Lestari and Arumsari, 2018;Limilia and Ariadne, 2018). ...
Young voters' low level of political knowledge, which impacts political participation, is still a phenomenon today. The influence of political knowledge on young voters' behavior is still being debated, and there is little empirical evidence, especially regarding political knowledge and voting behavior enhanced through specific educational programs. Therefore, an effective education program is needed to increase political knowledge and the desire of young voters to participate in general elections. This study aims to determine the effectiveness of educational programs in increasing political knowledge and shaping voting behavior among young voters in South Kalimantan Local Elections (Pilkada). We used a quasi-experimental research design by providing extension activities as an online educational intervention program to 41 participants. All participants took three measurement phases, starting from the pre-education program, post-education program, and post-Pilkada phase. The education program was conducted online by providing materials related to the reasons for using the right to vote, information on candidates, considerations for making choices, election techniques, and time and place for the election. The results of the analysis found that educational programs influenced the political knowledge and voting behavior of young voters. Thus, this educational program can significantly and effectively improve young voters' political knowledge and voting behavior.
... Political knowledge. Participants in Samples 2 and 3 completed a 5-item measure of political knowledge (Anson, 2018). All questions were multiple-choice with 2 to 5 response options. ...
Is intellectual humility (IH) related to more accuracy and less overconfidence in decision-making contexts? Here we sought to answer this question and clarify ambiguities in the literature by examining the relations among IH, critical thinking, and overconfidence measures. We assessed these relations in both online community and college participants. Overall, IH tended to be related to more accuracy on a range of critical thinking measures and to less overestimation and overclaiming. We also found some evidence for a Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e., those scoring the lowest on IH significantly overestimated their performance). Results tended to be significantly stronger in the online community participants than in the college participants, and the Dunning-Kruger effect was not present in the college sample. Overall, the current findings invite questions about how IH contributes to more accuracy and less overconfidence and whether IH can be leveraged to bolster critical thinking.
... Political knowledge. Participants in Samples 2 and 3 completed a 5-item measure of political knowledge (Anson, 2018). All questions were multiple-choice with 2 to 5 response options. ...
Is intellectual humility (IH) related to more accuracy and less overconfidence in decision-making contexts? Here we sought to answer this question and clarify ambiguities in the literature by examining the relations among IH, critical thinking, and overconfidence measures. We assessed these relations in both online community and college participants. Overall, IH tended to be related to more accuracy on a range of critical thinking measures and to less overestimation and overclaiming. We also found some evidence for a Dunning-Kruger effect (i.e. those scoring the lowest on IH significantly overestimated their performance). Results tended to be significantly stronger in the online community participants than in the college participants, and the Dunning-Kruger effect was not present in the college sample. Overall, the current findings invite questions about how IH contributes to more accuracy and less overconfidence and whether IH can be leveraged to bolster critical thinking.
... Concretamente, en el campo de la psicología política y desde una perspectiva sociocognitiva, el conocimiento político es considerado un indicador de los esquemas políticos (Fiske, 1990;Rhee y Capella, 1997). Es decir, representa un conjunto de cogniciones interrelacionadas acerca del sistema político, asociadas a la modalidad de vinculación política, a las emociones políticas, a la participación y a la cultura política a nivel regional (Acuña et al., 2003;Brussino y Acuña, 2015;Brussino et al., 2008Brussino et al., , 2011Brussino et al., , 2021Sorribas y Brussino, 2016) e internacional (Anson, 2018;Mondak 2020;Pennycook, y Rand, 2021). A nivel local disponemos de la Escala de Conocimiento Político (CP, adaptación de Brussino et al., 2008), medida cognitiva y de estructura unidimensional compuesta por ocho elementos, con evidencia de adecuación psicométrica estable a lo largo de los estudios citados previamente. ...
El estudio presenta los procedimientos de construcción y validación de una medida de conocimiento sobre juicio por jurado. En una fase preliminar, los elementos fueron construidos y sometidos a una revisión de expertos. Luego, se corrigieron los ítems mediante un estudio piloto, con una muestra cuotificada de 202 participantes. Posteriormente, mediante un análisis confirmatorio, se evaluó el ajuste de la solución exploratoria unidimensional con una muestra no probabilística de 426 participantes. Los resultados apoyaron un modelo unidimensional para el registro de diferencias individuales, con propiedades psicométricas aceptables de confiabilidad y validez —contenido y estructura— para la Escala de Conocimiento sobre Juicio de Jurados para la ciudad de Neuquén, Argentina. A pesar de la particularidad del contexto legal, su utilidad puede extenderse a otros campos de estudio sobre la participación ciudadana en la región.
... Research on political knowledge frequently asks respondents as few as five questions (see Carpini & Keeter, 1993;Anson, 2018). In Study 2, we asked respondents 10 questions, which, while still a modest number given the vast universe of possible political knowledge, nonetheless represents a robust dependent variable. ...
Recent research on the newsjunkie trait-intrinsic need for orientation (INFO)-has not yet examined specific kinds of information newsjunkies consume or whether the newsjunkie characteristic predicts outcomes like political knowledge. Study 1 surveyed U.S. adults' (N=2,059) INFO, hard news consumption, soft news consumption, use of partisan outlets FOX News and MSNBC, and use of less-partisan outlets like BBC and NBC. The newsjunkie trait was one of the strongest predictors of hard news consumption (like news about foreign affairs and the economy), after controlling for numerous factors, and it did not predict soft news consumption (news about entertainment, sports etc.). The newsjunkie trait was positively associated with use of both partisan and less-partisan outlets. Study 2 examined U.S. adults'(N=1,054) INFO and political knowledge, while holding constant most of the variables controlled for in Study 1. Despite some evidence from Study 1 that newsjunkies are sophisticated news consumers, INFO did not positively predict political knowledge; the strongest positive predictor of political knowledge was consuming political news, and the only other significant news use correlate was use of FOX News, which was negatively associated with political knowledge. Implications for research on the intrinsic need for orientation, news use, and political outcomes are discussed.
... Consistent with the methods used in prior Dunning-Kruger effect research (Kruger & Dunning, 1999) and several recent studies using ordinal data (Anson, 2018;Muller et al., 2021;Sullivan et al., 2019), a quartile split categorized participants into four groups based on their Social Distance Scale (SDS) scores. Some participants had the same SDS score and were therefore categorized into the same group, resulting an unequal number of participants in each SDS group. ...
The Dunning-Kruger (DK) effect is a form of meta-ignorance of knowledge (Kruger & Dunning, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 121–1134, 1999) that has not been explored regarding mental illness public stigma. The current study examined the DK effect in this field by comparing participants’ actual stigma (measured by a social distance scale) and their perceived stigma (measured by a self-rating scale compared to their peers). In addition, the effectiveness of two types of feedback on stigma reduction was explored. Undergraduate participants (N = 393) with low actual public stigma perceived their public stigma level to be higher than it was, while those with high actual public stigma perceived it to be lower, supporting the DK effect. Generalized feedback did not reduce public stigma, whereas personalized feedback reduced public stigma for participants with high public stigma. This study revealed the existence of meta-ignorance in the field of mental illness public stigma and the effectiveness of personalized feedback.
... There is also evidence for the Dunning-Kruger effect in the knowledge realm. For example, those people that have the least knowledge about chemistry (Bell & Volckmann, 2011;Pazicni & Bauer, 2014), gun safety (Ehrlinger et al., 2008), USA's political system (Anson, 2018), and autism (Motta et al., 2018) have the most inflated view about their knowledge in these realms. ...
Years of research by theoretical and philosophical psychologists have amassed philosophically inspired arguments for the importance of philosophical reflections on the foundations of psychological research. The purpose of this article is to complement these philosophical considerations by showing that psychological research itself can add to our understanding of the limits of empirical psychology. By drawing on research on the Dunning–Kruger effect, I argue that psychologists that are not trained in philosophy can lack the metacognition necessary to realize their own ignorance about the philosophical dimensions of their empirical research. Because psychologists usually are not trained philosophers, they likely overestimate their own competence in judging the relevance of philosophical considerations for their research. Furthermore, this tendency to neglect philosophical considerations can be reinforced by motivated reasoning. Since philosophical criticism frequently targets core assumptions of psychological research, it can challenge psychologists’ self-image as rational and up-to-date researchers. Consequently, the reaction of psychologists to philosophical criticism can be driven by a motivation to protect core identities. The conclusion to be drawn from this argumentation is that philosophical training should play a bigger role in psychological curricula.
... Partisans have been shown to perceive that out-group members are more influenced by campaigns , are more biased (Robinson et al., 1995b), and are more likely to violate political norms (Muddiman, 2019). Additionally, when partisan identity is salient, partisans with low political knowledge are more likely to overestimate their political knowledge (Anson, 2018). This, coupled with the results of our interviews, all suggests that partisanship is more likely to enhance deliberative bias, perhaps substantially. ...
In our research examining how people think and talk about immigration, we consistently find that people want to have a reasonable conversation about politics, but they often decide that productive conversations are not possible because other people are uninformed, irrational, close-minded, and uncivil. We argue that self-serving biases and phenomenological experiences lead to the biased perception that the self is far more capable of adhering to the ideals of rational deliberation than others, a process that we refer to as deliberative bias. In Study 1, we use data from in-depth interviews to develop the concept of deliberative bias. In Study 2, we use a survey to demonstrate that perceptions that other people are uninformed, irrational, close-minded, and uncivil are related to a decreased likelihood of talking politics with loose ties or those with opposing perspectives. These results suggest that deliberative bias may be a significant impediment to productive political conversations.
... There are various studies in the literature on how individuals evaluate themselves (Kruger & Dunning, 1999;Phillips et al., 2003;Snowden, 2002). These studies were carried out with a wide variety of groups and people including people in the field of political science (Anson, 2018), laboratory technicians (Haun et al., 2000), drivers who failed driving tests (Mynttinsen et al., 2009), and players in chess tournaments (Park & Santos-Pinto, 2010). The basis of these studies is based on the work of Kruger and Dunning (1999) with university students. ...
In the 21st century, individuals are expected to be scientifically literate and develop themselves in this direction. However, wrong judgments about self-competence, such as overconfidence, can cause mistakes in the process of solving problems related to science and technology and prevent making the right decisions. This situation, known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, is defined as a person's overconfidence in their abilities, knowledge, and skills. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between individuals' perceptions and observed levels of scientific literacy. Survey method was employed to conduct the study. The science literacy scale (SLS) developed by researchers was administered to 5426 adults aged between 18 and 65. The participants were asked to make predictions about the scores they could get from SLS before and after it was administrated. A significant and positive relationship between the pre- and post-scores that the participants predicted to receive from the scale and the scores they got from the scale was found. The difference between the individuals' observed science literacy levels and their predicted scores generally decreases by educational degree. The individuals’ awareness of their real situation increased after seeing the questions in SLS.
... The Dunning-Kruger effect describes individuals with the lowest knowledge or ability in a domain displaying the largest overestimations of their knowledge or ability (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). This phenomenon has been demonstrated with basic political knowledge (Anson, 2018;Ortoleva & Snowberg, 2015) and is especially worrying for considerations of public policy, where nearly everyone lacks extensive knowledge (Lupia, 2016) and people often overestimate their own knowledge regardless of how severely they do so Vitriol & Marsh, 2018). This bias may have real consequences for cases of acute misinformation, as a recent study found that a Dunning-Kruger effect for autism knowledge predicted opposition to mandatory vaccinations (Motta et al., 2018). ...
... The Dunning-Kruger effect describes individuals with the lowest knowledge or ability in a domain displaying the largest overestimations of their knowledge or ability (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). This phenomenon has been demonstrated with basic political knowledge (Anson, 2018;Ortoleva & Snowberg, 2015) and is especially worrying for considerations of public policy, where nearly everyone lacks extensive knowledge (Lupia, 2016) and people often overestimate their own knowledge regardless of how severely they do so (Fernbach et al., 2013;Vitriol & Marsh, 2018). This bias may have real consequences for cases of acute misinformation, as a recent study found that a Dunning-Kruger effect for autism knowledge predicted opposition to mandatory vaccinations (Motta et al., 2018). ...
... The overestimation of skill represented by DKE is a type of response bias, which is the systematic tendency to respond, or assess, with inaccurate or misleading self-ratings ( Paulhus & Dubois, 2014 ). Response bias is demonstrated by DKE with competence overestimation because of the subconscious effort to preserve and promote self ( Anson, 2018 ). There are other similar types of response biases, including socially desirable responding, which is the tendency toward overly positive self-descriptions that are perceived as more socially acceptable ( Bensch, Paulhus, Stankov, & Ziegler, 2019 ;Paulhus & Dubois, 2014 ). ...
The Dunning–Kruger Effect (DKE) describes the cognitive bias in which novices tend to overestimate performance or competence while experts tend to underestimate. Those who are lacking in competence do not have the skills to accurately recognize deficient performance. Subjective assessment is used widely in simulation learning and in nursing curricula, yet often without expert feedback and reflective discussions, which can result in mistakes being overlooked and encoded, which could subsequently result in clinical errors. The prevalence of DKE should not be interpreted solely as a deprecation of the use of subjective measures, but rather as an indicator of the need for improving self-reflection, metacognition, and an opportunity for formative feedback.
This article examines a model positing that overconfidence in political understanding resulting from social media use for news and politics hampers traditional media use. It confirms a positive relationship between Facebook political information experiences and overconfidence in political understanding. However, contrary to expectations, there is a positive relationship between overconfidence and traditional media use. An exploratory post hoc analysis, viewed through the lens of truth vs. false-default orientations, suggests overconfident users might use traditional news outlets to confirm their sense of knowledge, thereby exhibiting a false-default orientation on social media political information.
Over the decades, numerous researchers have identified psychological predictors of conservative and liberal political orientation. However, most research teams have focused on a single predictor at a time, occasionally two. Moreover, most researchers have tended to stay within the theoretical and methodological confines of their subdiscipline (e.g., social psychology vs. personality psychology). Here, we review and integrate evidence across different subdisciplines to propose a constellation of four psychological constructs (disgust sensitivity, preference for order, deontological morality, and social dominance orientation) that, working together, form a more nuanced and fine-grained account of why people are attracted to different ends of the political spectrum. In doing so, we demonstrate the usefulness of moving beyond operationalizing political orientation in a single-dimensional (left-to-right) manner. We suggest that the proposed “4D Model” represents an incremental advance that makes more specific predictions about who will be attracted to which strands of political conservatism.
The concept of political knowledge is foundational to American politics, but we know little about the extent to which its two dimensions—objective knowledge and knowledge confidence—covary over time as citizens learn about the American political system. We employ a two-wave survey to study whether individuals gain both objective knowledge and knowledge confidence such that they calibrate over time when exposed to civic education coursework. We find students gain both objective knowledge and knowledge confidence over the semester and that, on average, the gap between them shrinks after taking Introduction to American Government. However, we also see evidence that a student’s initial levels of knowledge shape growth in these two concepts and whether they become more closely aligned over the semester. The results shed light on the relationship between what individuals know about politics and what they think they know, and the role of civic education in shaping an active and informed electorate.
Most Americans have little knowledge about why we elect the president through the Electoral College. This complex system that requires understanding the impact of 51 different elections on the outcome of the presidential election leads many Americans to desire the simple effectiveness of the popular vote method. Previous scholarship highlights a majority of Americans wanting to replace our current system with the popular vote. Political science research lacks a clear understanding of the impact of partisan self-interest on views of changing the presidential election method. In this paper we look at public opinion surveys over the last 45 years and find there was no clear partisan difference in views of changing the system before the electoral inversion of 2000. We argue that partisan self-interest was activated because of this electoral inversion. The inversion of 2016 led to a hardening of opinions on replacing the Electoral College with the popular vote.
In base a quali meccanismi l'elettorato esprime preferenze politiche per figuri autoritari e disfunzionali come, per esempio, Donald Trump? Due meccanismi che hanno un peso importante sono il gaslighting e dell’effetto Dunning-Kruger, i quali ugualmente concorrono nel portare gli elettori a compiere scelte dannose per la propria società e sé stessi.
Background: A rapidly growing body of research demonstrates that conspiratorial ideation is related to less accuracy, more overconfidence, and more reliance on intuition. Yet, the bulk of this research has focused on belief in conspiracy theories rather than conspiracy theorists. As such it remains unclear whether all conspiracy theorists are equally inaccurate, overconfident, and reliant on intuition or whether there are types of conspiracy theorists who differ across these variables.
Methods: To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a preregistered secondary data analysis of the variable-level and person-centered relations among conspiratorial ideation, accuracy, overconfidence, and motivations across five samples ( Ns ranged from 477 to 3,056). We used multiple measures of each variable to build in conceptual replication.
Results: Broadly, the variable-centered results were consistent with existing research and revealed that conspiratorial ideation tended to be related to less accuracy, more overconfidence, more reliance on intuition and closemindedness, and less rational thinking and open-mindedness. In person-centered analyses, we found two classes of individuals, one who scored higher on conspiratorial ideation and one who scored lower. In the conspiracy theorist class, we found that conspiracy theorists were not unknowledgeable and irrational across the board.
Conclusions: Thus, conspiracy theorists may be more psychologically complex than originally presumed based on variable-level results. Future research is needed to examine how different motives manifest in conspiracy theorists and to leverage insights from such research to reduce susceptibility to misinformation.
The increasing access to online health information and the use of this information for self‐medication or self‐diagnosis can foster a discounting of the epistemic authority of experts, as well as an over‐reliance on laypersons' expertise. However, the emerging cognitive bias—the overconfidence effect—is poorly investigated in the sociological field. This study offers a novel contribution to the role of overconfidence bias in online health information‐seeking behavior and self‐care practices. A cross‐sectional study was conducted through an online survey on a sample of 783 Italian university students. Univariate linear regression and stepwise multiple linear regression analysis were performed on the collected data. The findings suggest that overconfidence and self‐care practices are predictors of health information seeking online. The multiple linear regression model revealed that the association between overconfidence bias and online health information seeking is mediated by self‐care behaviors. Therefore, the overconfidence effect influences health information seeking to the extent that the search for information is aimed at self‐care practices. This study could trigger further research on implementing the overconfidence effect and self‐care in theoretical models of health information seeking.
Political hostility is a pervasive problem in American politics, producing dangerous consequences for individuals and society. Recent research in social psychology suggests that intellectual humility may be able to reduce political hostility, but the underlying causal relationship remains unclear. The purpose of this article is to examine how intellectual humility lowers hostility toward people who disagree (dissenters) about specific political topics. Results from a national survey indicate that those holding political beliefs with humility feel less negativity toward dissenters. Fixed‐effects regression models also show that intrapersonal variation in intellectual humility predicts issue‐specific hostility across political topics. Furthermore, a survey experiment priming intellectual humility caused a corresponding decrease in hostility toward dissenters without impacting underlying opinions. Altogether, these results suggest that fostering intellectual humility may be a fruitful avenue for alleviating the hostility and anger that often accompany political disagreement.
This article argues that a psychological bias called “focalism” contributes to an overestimation of the differences between political candidates, which in turn increases participation and polarization. Focalism causes people to confuse the allocation of attention to things with the importance of those things. Because attention to politics typically centers on conflict, the result is an exaggeration of differences across the partisan divide. I test this intuition using an experimental design that provides all respondents with all the information they need to estimate how much Joe Biden and Donald Trump objectively disagreed on policy positions just before the 2020 election. I find that shifting attention—toward either those positions the candidates agreed or disagreed with each other on—influences beliefs about the differences between candidates. The effect exceeds that of identifying as a Democrat or as a Republican. Beyond those perceptions, focalism increases turnout intentions, perceptions of election importance, negative feelings towards the out‐candidate, and affective polarization.
Using data from a conjoint experiment in three countries (Brazil, n = 2038; Germany, n = 2012, and the United States, n = 2005), this study demonstrates that journalistic transparency can cue trust at the level of the entire news outlet—or domain level—using a Google Knowledge Panel that comes up when people search for a news outlet. In Brazil and the United States, two pieces of information in a Knowledge Panel provided the strongest heuristics that a news outlet was trustworthy: a description of the news outlet and a description of other sites accessed by people who frequent that news outlet’s website. In Germany, information about journalists and the description of the news outlet were the strongest cues. Results offer insights into how people heuristically process online news and are discussed in relation to the heuristic-systematic model of information processing.
We examine the role of racial resentment in motivating Americans to express confidence in misinformed beliefs on racialized scientific issues. We study survey data from the 2020 American National Election Study. We examine respondents’ endorsement of misinformation on different scientific issues and their reported confidence in these views. We find that racial resentment plays a strong role in leading Americans to hold confidently misinformed views about highly racialized policy issues (e.g., the occurrence of anthropogenic climate change or the origins of the COVID‐19 pandemic), but not on less racialized issues (e.g., childhood vaccine safety). Our work underscores the often‐overlooked importance of intergroup attitudes in shaping overconfidence and helps resolve theoretical tensions in the study of misinformation acceptance.
The Dunning Kruger Effect, which states that individuals with little or no knowledge about a subject have more self-confidence than experts, was first put forward as a result of a social experiment in 1999. Over time, the concept has become a theory that has been accepted in the literature and has been the subject of studies in some branches of science and has been translated into Turkish as Cahil Cesareti. In this direction, the aim of the study is to analyze the Google search frequencies of the words "Dunning Kruger Effect" and "Ignorant Courage" and to determine the level of awareness of the concepts in the USA and Turkey comparatively. As a result of the Google Trends data and literature review, it has been determined that the Dunning Kruger Effect theory is known in the USA both in the general category and in the finance category. In Turkey, it has been seen that the related concept is known in the general category and has been the subject of some studies. In addition, it was stated that the related concept does not have financial awareness, as a result of both Google Trends data and literature search. In this direction, the study adds originality to the national literature at the stage of determining the level of awareness of the Dunning Kruger Effect theory, whose Turkish equivalent is Ignorant Courage, in the finance literature.
The world is more politically polarized than at any time since the two World Wars. People are adversely affected by political polarization. Predictably, they are raising political issues in psychotherapy. Health service psychologists (HSPs) receive conflicting directions about their political behavior, sometimes instructed to keep their political views out of therapy, other times instructed to engage in political advocacy. This article addresses both personal and professional intersections HSPs have with the political world and politics, broadly defined, including history, competency benchmarks, current challenges, cultural considerations, ethics, implications and applications for HSPs, future directions, clinical applications and recommendations, and other considerations.
Purpose
This study examines the association between financial literacy confidence and financial satisfaction. The authors posit that overconfident poor performers will experience greater levels of financial satisfaction and underconfident high performers will experience lower levels of financial satisfaction.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the results of an objective financial literacy assessment and a subjective financial literacy assessment, variables measuring study participants' financial literacy overconfidence and financial literacy underconfidence are constructed. The variables are analyzed for their associations with financial satisfaction.
Findings
The results from the multivariate analysis suggest that financial literacy overconfidence (underconfidence) is associated positively (negatively) with higher levels of financial satisfaction and is associated negatively (positively) with lower levels of financial satisfaction.
Practical implications
The discussion first highlights that to increase objective financial literacy, the disconnect between subjective financial literacy assessment and objective financial literacy must be recognized. Secondly, the discussion encourages financial literacy and education programs to incorporate behavioral education, which can provide learners with an awareness of the role of financial literacy confidence when making financial decisions.
Originality/value
Financial literacy overconfidence can result in an inability to recognize the realities of one's financial situation. Individuals who are overconfident in their level of financial literacy preformed lower on an objective assessment of their financial literacy, yet also tended to have a greater sense of financial satisfaction. This finding not only suggests that financial literacy overconfidence results in financial ineptitude, but also suggest that financial literacy overconfidence can result in specious conclusions regarding one's financial situation. The financial literacy underconfidence finding suggests that those who are financial literate, and who are also underconfident in their financial literacy, are less likely to have high financial satisfaction.
This study examines traditional and social media news use in relation to political knowledge from the perspective of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Data from a two-wave panel survey show that social media use for news is positively related to knowledge miscalibration, or a mismatch between subjective and factual political knowledge. That is, respondents who use social media for news often tend to overestimate their levels of knowledge. In contrast, traditional news use is negatively associated with knowledge miscalibration. These results seem attributable to the role of social media news use in fostering subjective political knowledge and traditional news use in facilitating factual learning. Implications are discussed for the role of news consumption in the political process.
Does epistemic confidence affect Americans’ willingness to defend misperceptions in the face of correction? Individuals with excessive confidence in their political knowledge are expected to resist the effects of corrective cues against political misperceptions. In this study, I assess the effects of confidence on skepticism towards five common political misperceptions in observational and experimental settings. In Study 1, I observationally assess the effects of epistemic confidence on resistance to corrective cues. In Study 2, I temper excessive confidence among a random subset of respondents using a specialized experimental treatment, before exposing them to a corrective cue. Together, the results show that corrections can reduce support for misperceptions among those with modest confidence. However, in the presence of excessive epistemic confidence, these treatments are ineffective. The present findings suggest that epistemic confidence complicates the work of fact-checkers and science communicators in modern democratic politics.
One of the most notable recent developments in survey research is the increased usage of online convenience samples drawn from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). While scholars have noted various social and political differences (e.g., age, partisanship) between MTurk and population-based samples, the breadth and depth of these variations remain unclear. We investigate the extent to which MTurk samples differ from population samples, and the underlying nature of these differences. We do so by replicating items from the population-based American National Election Studies (ANES) 2012 Time Series Study in a survey administered to a sample of MTurk respondents. With few exceptions, we not only find that MTurk respondents differ significantly from respondents completing the 2012 ANES via the Web but also that most differences are reduced considerably when controlling for easily measurable sample features. Thus, MTurk respondents do not appear to differ fundamentally from population-based respondents in unmeasurable ways. This suggests that MTurk data can be used to advance research programs, particularly if researchers measure and account for a range of political and demographic variables as needed.
As Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) has surged in popularity throughout political science, scholars have increasingly challenged the external validity of inferences made drawing upon MTurk samples. At workshops and conferences experimental and survey-based researchers hear questions about the demographic characteristics, political preferences, occupation, and geographic location of MTurk respondents. In this paper we answer these questions and present a number of novel results. By introducing a new benchmark comparison for MTurk surveys, the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey, we compare the joint distributions of age, gender, and race among MTurk respondents within the United States. In addition, we compare political, occupational, and geographical information about respondents from MTurk and CCES. Throughout the paper we show several ways that political scientists can use the strengths of MTurk to attract respondents with specific characteristics of interest to best answer their substantive research questions.
According to some recent research, Americans hold a great deal of misinformation about important political issues. However, such investigations treat incorrect answers to quiz questions measuring knowledge as evidence of misinformation. This study instead defines misperceptions as incorrect answers that respondents are confident are correct. Two surveys of representative samples of American adults on the Affordable Care Act reveal that most people were uncertain about the provisions in the law. Confidently held incorrect beliefs were far less common than incorrect answers. Misperceptions were most prevalent on aspects of the law on which elites prominently and persistently made incorrect claims. Furthermore, although Americans appear to have learned about the law between 2010 and 2012, misperceptions on many provisions of the law persisted.
We examine the trade-offs associated with using Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples—the modal sample in published experimental political science—but less representative than subjects in Internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples.
Despite the importance of self-awareness for managerial success, many organizational members hold overly optimistic views of their expertise and performance-a phenomenon particularly prevalent among those least skilled in a given domain. We examined whether this same pattern extends to appraisals of emotional intelligence (EI), a critical managerial competency. We also examined why this overoptimism tends to survive explicit feedback about performance. Across 3 studies involving professional students, we found that the least skilled had limited insight into deficits in their performance. Moreover, when given concrete feedback, low performers disparaged either the accuracy or the relevance of that feedback, depending on how expediently they could do so. Consequently, they expressed more reluctance than top performers to pursue various paths to self-improvement, including purchasing a book on EI or paying for professional coaching. Paradoxically, it was top performers who indicated a stronger desire to improve their EI following feedback. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their incompetence. This lack of awareness arises because poor performers are doubly cursed: Their lack of skill deprives them not only of the ability to produce correct responses, but also of the expertise necessary to surmise that they are not producing them. People base their perceptions of performance, in part, on their preconceived notions about their skills. Because these notions often do not correlate with objective performance, they can lead people to make judgments about their performance that have little to do with actual accomplishment.
▪ Abstract Is it possible for people to join their way to good citizenship? Contemporary thinking, both academic and popular, often leaves the impression that it is, but a careful investigation of the evidence raises serious doubts. In actuality, belonging to voluntary associations is a woefully inadequate foundation for good citizenship for three primary reasons: People join groups that are homogeneous, not heterogeneous; civic participation does not lead to, and may turn people away from, political participation; and not all groups promote democratic values. Good citizens need to learn that democracy is messy, inefficient, and conflict-ridden. Voluntary associations do not teach these lessons.
One of the most contested questions in the social sciences is whether people behave rationally. A large body of work assumes that individuals do in fact make rational economic, political, and social decisions. Yet hundreds of experiments suggest that this is not the case. Framing effects constitute one of the most stunning and influential demonstrations of irrationality. The effects not only challenge the foundational assumptions of much of the social sciences (e.g., the existence of coherent preferences or stable attitudes), but also lead many scholars to adopt alternative approaches (e.g., prospect theory). Surprisingly, virtually no work has sought to specify the political conditions under which framing effects occur. I fill this gap by offering a theory and experimental test. I show how contextual forces (e.g., elite competition, deliberation) and individual attributes (e.g., expertise) affect the success of framing. The results provide insight into when rationality assumptions apply and, also, have broad implications for political psychology and experimental methods.
That women exhibit lower levels of political knowledge than men is a common and consistent finding in political science research. Recently, scholars have begun examining whether the content and structure of political knowledge measures contribute to women’s perceived knowledge deficit. In an attempt to enter the debate on the explanations for gender differences in knowledge, I create and test a number of measures of gender-relevant political knowledge to determine whether broadening our definitions of what constitutes “knowledge” may help us more clearly understand the apparent gender gap in political knowledge in the United States. The results indicate that expected gender differences disappear when respondents are asked about the levels of women’s representation in the national government.
The number of independent voters in America increases each year, yet they remain misunderstood by both media and academics. Media describe independents as pivotal for electoral outcomes. Political scientists conclude that independents are merely 'undercover partisans': people who secretly hold partisan beliefs and are thus politically inconsequential. Both the pundits and the political scientists are wrong, argue the authors. They show that many Americans are becoming embarrassed of their political party. They deny to pollsters, party activists, friends, and even themselves, their true partisanship, instead choosing to go 'undercover' as independents. Independent Politics demonstrates that people intentionally mask their partisan preferences in social situations. Most importantly, breaking with decades of previous research, it argues that independents are highly politically consequential. The same motivations that lead people to identify as independent also diminish their willingness to engage in the types of political action that sustain the grassroots movements of American politics.
Large numbers of Americans endorse political rumors on surveys. But do they truly believe what they say? In this paper, I assess the extent to which subscription to political rumors represents genuine beliefs as opposed to expressive responses—rumor endorsements designed to express opposition to politicians and policies rather than genuine belief in false information. I ran several experiments, each designed to reduce expressive responding on two topics: among Republicans on the question of whether Barack Obama is a Muslim and among Democrats on whether members of the federal government had advance knowledge about 9/11. The null results of all experiments lead to the same conclusion: the incidence of expressive responding is very small, though somewhat larger for Democrats than Republicans. These results suggest that survey responses serve as a window into the underlying beliefs and true preferences of the mass public.
Weighting techniques are employed to generalize results from survey experiments to populations of theoretical and substantive interest. Although weighting is often viewed as a second-order methodological issue, these adjustment methods invoke untestable assumptions about the nature of sample selection and potential heterogeneity in the treatment effect. Therefore, although weighting is a useful technique in estimating population quantities, it can introduce bias and also be used as a researcher degree of freedom. We review survey experiments published in three major journals from 2000–2015 and find that there are no standard operating procedures for weighting survey experiments. We argue that all survey experiments should report the sample average treatment effect (SATE). Researchers seeking to generalize to a broader population can weight to estimate the population average treatment effect (PATE), but should discuss the construction and application of weights in a detailed and transparent manner given the possibility that weighting can introduce bias.
Political misperceptions can distort public debate and undermine people's ability to form meaningful opinions. Why do people often hold these false or unsupported beliefs, and why is it sometimes so difficult to convince them otherwise? We argue that political misperceptions are typically rooted in directionally motivated reasoning, which limits the effectiveness of corrective information about controversial issues and political figures. We discuss factors known to affect the prevalence of directionally motivated reasoning and assess strategies for accurately measuring misperceptions in surveys. Finally, we address the normative implications of misperceptions for democracy and suggest important topics for future research.
This paper analyzes the effects of biases in economic information on partisans’ economic perceptions. In survey experiments, I manipulate the presence of partisan cues and the direction of proattitudinal information in news stories about the American economy. Results demonstrate that although proattitudinal tone in factual economic news stories most strongly affects partisans’ economic perceptions, inclusion of partisan cues alongside proattitudinal information results in weaker shifts in economic sentiment relative to stories lacking partisan content. These findings suggest that the relatively subtle process of agenda setting in economic news may be the most effective tool used by partisan news outlets to drive polarization in citizens’ factual economic perceptions.
When surveyed about economic conditions, supporters of the president's party often report more positive conditions than its opponents. Scholars have interpreted this finding to mean that partisans cannot even agree on matters of fact. We test an alternative interpretation: Partisans give partisan congenial answers even when they have, or could have inferred, information less flattering to the party they identify with. To test this hypothesis, we administered two surveys to nationally representative samples, experimentally manipulating respondents' motivation to be accurate via monetary incentives and on-screen appeals. Both treatments reduced partisan differences in reports of economic conditions significantly. Many partisans interpret factual questions about economic conditions as opinion questions, unless motivated to see them otherwise. Typical survey conditions thus reveal a mix of what partisans know about the economy, and what they would like to be true.
The media environment is changing. Today in the United States, the average viewer can choose from hundreds of channels, including several twenty-four hour news channels. News is on cell phones, on iPods, and online; it has become a ubiquitous and unavoidable reality in modern society. The purpose of this book is to examine systematically, how these differences in access and form of media affect political behaviour. Using experiments and new survey data, it shows how changes in the media environment reverberate through the political system, affecting news exposure, political learning, turnout, and voting behavior.
Over the past half-century, two overarching topics have dominated the study of mass political behaviour: How do ordinary citizens form their political judgments, and how good are they from a normative perspective? This book provides a novel goal-based approach to these questions, one that compels a wholesale rethinking of the roots of responsible democratic citizenship. The central claim of the book is that partisan identity comes in qualitatively different forms, with distinct political consequences. Blind partisan loyalty, as the pejorative label implies, facilitates bias and reduces attention to valuable information. Critical loyalty, by doing the opposite, outperforms standard measures of political engagement in leading to normatively desirable judgments. Drawing on both experimental and survey methods-as well as five decades of American political history-this book examines the nature and quality of mass political judgment across a wide range of political contexts, from perceptions of the economy, to the formation, updating, and organization of public policy preferences, to electoral judgment and partisan change. Contrary to much previous scholarship, the empirical findings reveal that rational judgment-holding preferences that align with one's material interests, values, and relevant facts-does not hinge on cognitive ability. Rather, breaking out of the apathy-versus-bias prison requires critical involvement, and critical involvement requires critical partisan loyalty.
A key characteristic of democratic politics is competition between groups, first of all political parties. Yet, the unavoidably partisan nature of political conflict has had too little influence on scholarship on political psychology. Despite more than 50 years of research on political parties and citizens, we continue to lack a systematic understanding of when and how political parties influence public opinion. We suggest that alternative approaches to political parties and public opinion can be best reconciled and examined through a richer theoretical perspective grounded in motivated reasoning theory. Clearly, parties shape citizens' opinions by mobilizing, influencing, and structuring choices among political alternatives. But the answer to when and how parties influence citizens' reasoning and political opinions depends on an interaction between citizens' motivations, effort, and information generated from the political environment (particularly through competition between parties). The contribution of motivated reasoning, as we describe it, is to provide a coherent theoretical framework for understanding partisan influence on citizens' political opinions. We review recent empirical work consistent with this framework. We also point out puzzles ripe for future research and discuss how partisan‐motivated reasoning provides a useful point of departure for such work.
We examine the trade-offs associated with using Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples-the modal sample in published experimental political science-but less representative than subjects in Internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples. © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved.
Partisans often perceive real world conditions in a manner that credits their own party. Yet recent findings suggest that partisans are capable of setting their loyalties aside when confronted with clear evidence, for example, during an economic crisis. This study examines a different possibility. While partisans may acknowledge the same reality, they may find other ways of aligning undeniable realities with their party loyalties. Using monthly survey data collected before and after the unexpected collapse of the British national economy (2004-10), this study presents one key finding: As partisans came to agree that economic conditions had gotten much worse, they conversely polarized in whether they thought the government was responsible. While the most committed partisans were surprisingly apt in acknowledging the economic collapse, they were also the most eager to attribute responsibility selectively. For that substantial share of the electorate, partisan-motivated reasoning seems highly adaptive.
Recent studies suggest psychological differences between conservatives and liberals, including that conservatives are more overconfident. We use a behavioral political economy model to show that while this is undoubtedly true for election years in the current era, there is no reason to believe that conservative ideologies are intrinsically linked to overconfidence. Indeed, it appears that in 1980 and before, conservatives and liberals were equally overconfident.
Abstract After decades of neglect, civic education is back on the agenda of political science in the United States. Despite huge increases in the formal educational attainment of the US population during the past 50 years, levels of political knowledge have barely budged. Today's college graduates know no more about politics than did high school graduates in 1950. Recent research indicates that levels of political knowledge affect the acceptance of democratic principles, attitudes toward specific issues, and political participation. There is evidence that political participation is in part a positional good and is shaped by relative as well as absolute levels of educational attainment. Contrary to findings from 30 years ago, recent research suggests that traditional classroom-based civic education can significantly raise political knowledge. Service learning—a combination of community-based civic experience and systematic classroom reflection on that experience—is a promising innovation, but program evaluations have yielded mixed results. Longstanding fears that private schools will not shape democratic citizens are not supported by the evidence.
About 1,450 voters in the 1993 mayorial election in Jerusalem made predictions about election outcomes and stated their preference for one of the two candidates. Strong wishful thinking effects were found, predictions varying in a linear trend as a function of the direction and intensity of preference. Half of the respondents were promised a substantial monetary reward if their predictions would be accurate (motivational remedy). Knowledge about the results of the most recent polls was tested, and the predictions made by accurate poll respondents (14.7 percent of the sample) were compared to those of non-accurate poll respondents (cognitive remedy). It was hypothesized that both remedies would reduce wishful thinking (i.e. reduce the differences in prediction among groups differing in preference). Significant interaction effects indicated that both remedies reduced wishful thinking somewhat. However, these effects were of very small magnitude compared to the high magnitude of the wishful thinking effects, and the overall intensity of wishful thinking remained unchanged. Differences between level of significance and effect magnitudes were discussed, focusing on implications for theoretical versus applied social research. It was also found that non-accurate poll respondents demonstrated a wishful thinking-like effect in their reported memory of the results of the polls, which were made public just one or two days previously.
This paper studies, theoretically and empirically, the role of overconfidence in political behavior. Our model of overconfidence in beliefs predicts that overconfidence leads to ideological extremeness, increased voter turnout, and stronger partisan identification. The model also makes nuanced predictions about the patterns of ideology in society. These predictions are tested using unique data that measure the overconfidence and standard political characteristics of a nationwide sample of over 3,000 adults. Our numerous predictions find strong support in these data. In particular, we document that overconfidence is a substantively and statistically important predictor of ideological extremeness, voter turnout, and partisan identification.
Participant attentiveness is a concern for many researchers using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). While studies comparing the attentiveness of participants on MTurk vs traditional subject pool samples provided mixed support for this concern, attention check questions and other methods of ensuring participant attention have become prolific in MTurk studies. Because MTurk is a population that learns, we hypothesized that MTurkers would be more attentive to instructions than traditional subject pool samples. In three online studies, participants from MTurk and collegiate populations participated in a task that included a measure of attentiveness to instructions (an instructional manipulation check – IMC). In all studies, MTurkers were more
attentive to instructions than college students, even on novel IMCs (studies 2 and 3), and
MTurkers showed larger effects in response to a minute text manipulation. These results have
implications for sustainable use of MTurk samples for social science research and the
conclusions drawn from research with MTurk and college subject pool samples.
Keywords: instructional manipulation checks, participant attentiveness, MTurk, college students
People tend to hold overly favorable views of their abilities in many social and intellectual domains. The authors suggest that this overestimation occurs, in part, because people who are unskilled in these domains suffer a dual burden: Not only do these people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it. Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although their test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. Several analyses linked this miscalibration to deficits in metacognitive skill, or the capacity to distinguish accuracy from error. Paradoxically, improving the skills of the participants, and thus increasing their metacognitive competence, helped them recognize the limitations of their abilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Research in social cognition suggests that individuals employ a variety of cognitive strategies when processing information. Some of these strategies may function as cognitive heuristics, or simplifying rules of thumb, under certain information-processing conditions. In this article, I suggest that political party stereotypes can function heuristically for voters when they are confronted with political information-processing tasks. Two different cognitive strategies are outlined, a ''theory-driven'' and ''data-driven'' mode, and hypotheses about the use of these two strategies in political candidate evaluation, inference, and perception are developed. These are tested with an experimental design that uses videotapes of political candidates as stimulus material. I find that partisan stereotypes have considerable influence in political information processing, suggesting that the political parties continue to play an important role in voters' decision-making processes.
When defined in terms of social identity and affect toward copartisans and opposing partisans, the polarization of the American electorate has dramatically increased. We document the scope and consequences of affective polarization of partisans using implicit, explicit, and behavioral indicators. Our evidence demonstrates that hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained or automatic in voters' minds, and that affective polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based on race. We further show that party cues exert powerful effects on nonpolitical judgments and behaviors. Partisans discriminate against opposing partisans, doing so to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race. We note that the willingness of partisans to display open animus for opposing partisans can be attributed to the absence of norms governing the expression of negative sentiment and that increased partisan affect provides an incentive for elites to engage in confrontation rather than cooperation.
Although widely studied, previous research of projection in the context of public opinion did not incorporate the distinction between adequate and false projection developed in the cognitive studies: Adequate projection contributes to accurate perceptions of public opinion while false projection impairs it. The analysis presented in this study includes the above distinction, building on two case studies: (1) a dataset comprised of 25 surveys conducted over a period of 10 years (N = 11,313) and (2) a panel study of the 2013 Israeli general election. Relying on the assumptions of the Bayesian model, we tested if frequent news exposure and factual political knowledge reduce false projection. We found that false projection is a highly persistent psychological tendency with little variance. Although news exposure and political knowledge did contribute to a more accurate perception of public opinion, they did not reduce false projection. Conversely, knowledge increased false projection among moderates and had no effect in this respect among proponents of a more extreme ideology. These findings align better with the motivated reasoning model than with the Bayesian model.
Good survey and experimental research requires subjects to pay attention to questions and treatments, but many subjects do not. In this article, we discuss “Screeners” as a potential solution to this problem. We first demonstrate Screeners’ power to reveal inattentive respondents and reduce noise. We then examine important but understudied questions about Screeners. We show that using a single Screener is not the most effective way to improve data quality. Instead, we recommend using multiple items to measure attention. We also show that Screener passage correlates with politically relevant characteristics, which limits the generalizability of studies that exclude failers. We conclude that attention is best measured using multiple Screener questions and that studies using Screeners can balance the goals of internal and external validity by presenting results conditional on different levels of attention.
Research on American mass behavior finds that party identifiers discount policy-relevant facts and interpret the same facts differently. Both findings imply enduring differences in the opinions that direct policy change. What this research does not consider, however, is that partisans confront the burden of evidence when they interpret facts about policy conditions. And thus, because policy-relevant evidence is always changing, the information environment could facilitate or inhibit partisan-directed rationalization. Employing national survey data and a Bayesian multilevel model, this study tests whether the distribution of economic facts moderates partisan disagreement about the U.S. economy. The results indicate that, when economic facts move in the positive and negative direction simultaneously, disagreement about the economy grows. When these facts move in one direction, however, disagreement recedes. In general, this study contributes theory and evidence on the tides of disagreement in partisan public opinion.
In our increasingly diverse society, most Americans identify with more than one group. These multiple identities often align with conflicting policy choices, such as when a Democratic parent may support increased social services spending from a partisan perspective but may also worry about the increasing national debt as a parent. Given the significance of identity, political elites often work to prime identities that will win over the most supporters. A large literature documents the substantial role such identity priming can play in shaping preferences, but virtually no work considers the reality that identity primes often compete with one another. That is, different groups simultaneously prime different identities that align with their interests. In this article, I explore what makes one identity prime more effective than another. I do so by offering a theory of what types of rhetoric makes for a stronger identity prime (relative to other types of rhetoric). I test my expectations with a unique survey experiment addressing three issues. I find that, in a competitive setting, certain rhetorical techniques dominate and drive the identities people rely on when forming preferences. The results have implications for public opinion and identity in the ever-changing demographic world in which we live.
Previous work on the Dunning–Kruger effect has shown that poor performers often show little insight into the shortcomings in their performance, presumably because they suffer a double curse. Deficits in their knowledge prevent them from both producing correct responses and recognizing that the responses they produce are inferior to those produced by others. Krajč and Ortmann (2008) offered a different account, suggesting instead that poor performers make performance estimates with no more error than top performers. Floor effects, coupled with the assumption of a backwards-J performance distribution, force their self-evaluations errors to be frequently positive in nature. Krajč and Ortmann, however, offered no empirical data to test their “signal extraction” account. In three studies, we assessed their theoretical model by examining whether (1) the data producing the Dunning–Kruger effect fit the statistical assumptions considered by Krajč and Ortmann necessary to produce it, and (2) to see if their framework reproduced Dunning–Kruger errors in a data set that fit their statistical assumptions. We found that the Krajč–Ortmann framework failed to anticipate self-evaluative misperceptions on the part of poor performers, but that it does much better at accounting for misperceptions among top performers. Paradoxically, the model suggests that Kruger and Dunning (1999) may have underestimated the accuracy of top performers, even though their account asserts such accuracy.
Political parties play a vital role in democracies by linking citizens to their representatives. Nonetheless, a longstanding concern is that partisan identification slants decision-making. Citizens may support (oppose) policies that they would otherwise oppose (support) in the absence of an endorsement from a political party—this is due in large part to what is called partisan motivated reasoning where individuals interpret information through the lens of their party commitment. We explore partisan motivated reasoning in a survey experiment focusing on support for an energy law. We identify two politically relevant factors that condition partisan motivated reasoning: (1) an explicit inducement to form an “accurate” opinion, and (2) cross-partisan, but not consensus, bipartisan support for the law. We further provide evidence of how partisan motivated reasoning works psychologically and affects opinion strength. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for understanding opinion formation and the overall quality of citizens’ opinions.
The cognitive mediation model of learning from the news proposes that motivations for news use influence the processing to which the news information is put, and that this processing is the proximal determinant of learning. The role of motivations in learning from the news, then, is indirect through information processing. Secondary analysis of data indicate substantial support for the model. The relationship between motivations and knowledge was reduced by the introduction of the mediating cognitive variables, news attention, and news elaboration. Both attention and elaboration were significantly related to knowledge, even after controlling all other variables in the model.
Experimental economics and social psychology share an interest in a widening subset of topics, relying on similar lab-based methods to address similar questions about human behavior, yet dialogue between the two fields remains in its infancy. We propose a framework for understanding this disconnect: The different approaches the disciplines take to translating real-world behavior into the laboratory create a “gap in abstraction,” which contributes to crucial differences in philosophy about the roles of deception and incentives in experiments and limits cross-pollination. We review two areas of common interest—altruism and group-based discrimination—which demonstrate this gap yet also reveal ways in which the two approaches might be seen as complementary rather than contradictory.
In this chapter, I provide argument and evidence that the scope of people's ignorance is often invisible to them. This meta-ignorance (or ignorance of ignorance) arises because lack of expertise and knowledge often hides in the realm of the “unknown unknowns” or is disguised by erroneous beliefs and background knowledge that only appear to be sufficient to conclude a right answer. As empirical evidence of meta-ignorance, I describe the Dunning–Kruger effect, in which poor performers in many social and intellectual domains seem largely unaware of just how deficient their expertise is. Their deficits leave them with a double burden—not only does their incomplete and misguided knowledge lead them to make mistakes but those exact same deficits also prevent them from recognizing when they are making mistakes and other people choosing more wisely. I discuss theoretical controversies over the interpretation of this effect and describe how the self-evaluation errors of poor and top performers differ. I also address a vexing question: If self-perceptions of competence so often vary from the truth, what cues are people using to determine whether their conclusions are sound or faulty?
Men tend to achieve higher response accuracy than women on surveys of political knowledge. We investigated the possibility that this performance gap is moderated by factors that render the communicative context of a survey intellectually threatening to women and thereby induce stereotype threat. In a telephone survey of college students' political knowledge, we manipulated two factors of the survey context: the alleged diagnosticity of the question set (i.e., whether it was portrayed as being sensitive to potential gender differences) and the gender of the interviewer. Consistent with previous studies of political knowledge, men scored higher than women overall. However, as predicted, this difference was reliably moderated by the manipulated factors. Women's scores were not reliably different from men's when the survey was portrayed as nondiagnostic and when women were interviewed by female interviewers. Diagnosticity and interviewer gender had no effects on men's scores. Consistent with previous research on stereotype threat, these results suggest that explicit and implicit cues reminding women of the possibility that they might confirm a negative gender stereotype can impair their retrieval of political knowledge.
One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11. Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique of “challenge interviews” on a sample of voters who reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the link was that it made sense of the administration's decision to go to war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification: for these voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and 9/11.
Research from numerous corners of psychological inquiry suggests that self-assessments of skill and character are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways. We review empirical findings on the imperfect nature of self-assessment and discuss implications for three real-world domains: health, education, and the workplace.
In general, people's self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship with their actual behavior and performance. The correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in many domains is moderate to meager—indeed, at times, other people's predictions of a person's outcomes prove more accurate than that person's self-predictions. In addition, people overrate themselves. On average, people say that they are “above average” in skill (a conclusion that defies statistical possibility), overestimate the likelihood that they will engage in desirable behaviors and achieve favorable outcomes, furnish overly optimistic estimates of when they will complete future projects, and reach judgments with too much confidence. Several psychological processes conspire to produce flawed self-assessments.
Research focusing on health echoes these findings. People are unrealistically optimistic about their own health risks compared with those of other people. They also overestimate how distinctive their opinions and preferences (e.g., discomfort with alcohol) are among their peers—a misperception that can have a deleterious impact on their health. Unable to anticipate how they would respond to emotion-laden situations, they mispredict the preferences of patients when asked to step in and make treatment decisions for them. Guided by mistaken but seemingly plausible theories of health and disease, people misdiagnose themselves—a phenomenon that can have severe consequences for their health and longevity.
Similarly, research in education finds that students' assessments of their performance tend to agree only moderately with those of their teachers and mentors. Students seem largely unable to assess how well or poorly they have comprehended material they have just read. They also tend to be overconfident in newly learned skills, at times because the common educational practice of massed training appears to promote rapid acquisition of skill—as well as self-confidence—but not necessarily the retention of skill. Several interventions, however, can be introduced to prompt students to evaluate their skill and learning more accurately.
In the workplace, flawed self-assessments arise all the way up the corporate ladder. Employees tend to overestimate their skill, making it difficult to give meaningful feedback. CEOs also display overconfidence in their judgments, particularly when stepping into new markets or novel projects—for example, proposing acquisitions that hurt, rather then help, the price of their company's stock. We discuss several interventions aimed at circumventing the consequences of such flawed assessments; these include training people to routinely make cognitive repairs correcting for biased self-assessments and requiring people to justify their decisions in front of their peers.
The act of self-assessment is an intrinsically difficult task, and we enumerate several obstacles that prevent people from reaching truthful self-impressions. We also propose that researchers and practitioners should recognize self-assessment as a coherent and unified area of study spanning many subdisciplines of psychology and beyond. Finally, we suggest that policymakers and other people who makes real-world assessments should be wary of self-assessments of skill, expertise, and knowledge, and should consider ways of repairing self-assessments that may be flawed.
The behavior and attitude of the voters in the 1952 election are examined in terms of three independent variables established for this study: party identification, candidate orientation, and issue orientation. Within this framework, the analysis has been organized to test two hypotheses: (a) the motivation of political behavior is effective in direct relation to the number of congruent forces that motivate the individual; and (b) that the effectiveness of these motivating forces is reduced if there is conflict among them. The concepts and categories of this analysis are applied to show significant similarities and contrasts with the 1948 election, and extended to other electoral decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Optimal jurisdiction size is a cornerstone of government design. A strong tradition in political thought argues that democracy thrives in smaller jurisdictions, but existing studies of the effects of jurisdiction size, mostly cross-sectional in nature, yield ambiguous results due to sorting effects and problems of endogeneity. We focus on internal political efficacy, a psychological condition that many see as necessary for high-quality participatory democracy. We identify a quasiexperiment, a large-scale municipal reform in Denmark, which allows us to estimate a causal effect of jurisdiction size on internal political efficacy. The reform, affecting some municipalities, but not all, was implemented by the central government, and resulted in exogenous, and substantial, changes in municipal population size. Based on survey data collected before and after the reform, we find, using various difference-in-difference and matching estimators, that jurisdiction size has a causal and sizeable detrimental effect on citizens' internal political efficacy.
Scholars have found source cues—the political actors behind a policy issue—to be a potent cause of opinion change. The implication is an easily persuaded public. I advance the argument that the public is not so easily persuaded. A policy featuring group beneficiaries provides a highly informative cue, one that is likely to dominate source cues. This insight is based on research demonstrating that people ignore source cues if they engage the subject matter at hand. Using a variety of experiments, I find that group beneficiary cues often dominate source cues. However, I also find that source cues affect opinion if they provide unexpected information about (1) an endorsement that is contrary to the source’s beliefs or (2) feature an extreme, disliked outgroup.
A considerable body of data suggests that men know more about politics than do women. Although gender gaps exist in other aspects of political behavior, the unusual magnitude of the gender gap makes it particularly perplexing. In this paper, we advance and test the hypothesis that the knowledge gap is partly an artifact of how knowledge is measured. If men are disproportionately more likely to guess than are women, then observed gender disparities in knowledge will be artificially inflated. To test this hypothesis, we reexamine data used in two recent inquiries concerning the gender gap in knowledge, along with experimental data from the 1998 NES Pilot Study. All analyses point to a common conclusion: approximately 50% of the gender gap is illusory, reflecting response patterns that work to the collective advantage of male respondents.