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. 2022 Nov;42(8):1078-1086.
doi: 10.1177/0272989X221118078. Epub 2022 Aug 20.

COVID-19 and Politically Motivated Reasoning

Allegra Maguire  1 , Emil Persson  1 , Daniel Västfjäll  2 , Gustav Tinghög  3
Affiliations

COVID-19 and Politically Motivated Reasoning

Allegra Maguire et al. Med Decis Making. 2022 Nov.

Abstract

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the world witnessed a partisan segregation of beliefs toward the global health crisis and its management. Politically motivated reasoning, the tendency to interpret information in accordance with individual motives to protect valued beliefs rather than objectively considering the facts, could represent a key process involved in the polarization of attitudes. The objective of this study was to explore politically motivated reasoning when participants assess information regarding COVID-19.

Design: We carried out a preregistered online experiment using a diverse sample (N = 1,500) from the United States. Both Republicans and Democrats assessed the same COVID-19-related information about the health effects of lockdowns, social distancing, vaccination, hydroxychloroquine, and wearing face masks.

Results: At odds with our prestated hypothesis, we found no evidence in line with politically motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about COVID-19. Moreover, we found no evidence supporting the idea that numeric ability or cognitive sophistication bolster politically motivated reasoning in the case of COVID-19. Instead, our findings suggest that participants base their assessment on prior beliefs of the matter.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that politically polarized attitudes toward COVID-19 are more likely to be driven by lack of reasoning than politically motivated reasoning-a finding that opens potential avenues for combating political polarization about important health care topics.

Highlights: Participants assessed numerical information regarding the effect of different COVID-19 policies.We found no evidence in line with politically motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about COVID-19.Participants tend to base their assessment of COVID-19-related facts on prior beliefs of the matter.Politically polarized attitudes toward COVID-19 are more a result of lack of thinking than partisanship.

Keywords: COVID-19; identity-protective cognition; motivated reasoning; science literacy.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Swedish Research Council (2018-01755). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Figures

Graphical Abstract
Graphical Abstract
This is a visual representation of the abstract.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Experimental scenarios. Each scenario presented 2 versions with reversed effect obtained by switching columns in one contingency table. On the left, scenarios (a) and (b) are designed to be politically neutral and nonpolarizing. Scenario (a), skin crème, represents the main control condition since it is the only one not related to COVID-19. On the right, scenarios (c), (d), (e), and (f) are both related to COVID-19 and designed to be politically polarizing. Complete materials with the description of the scenarios and with behavior-feelings questions can be found in the supplementary materials.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Proportion of correct responses in the different scenarios for Democrats and Republicans. S, symptom; H, hydroxychloroquine; L, lockdown; M, mask; V, vaccine; SC, skin crème. The associated sign stands for the direction of the effect (increase and decrease). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Sample size: N = 1114.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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