IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v95y2014i5p1399-1418.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Voters Become Misinformed: An Investigation of the Emergence and Consequences of False Factual Beliefs

Author

Listed:
  • Justin Reedy
  • Chris Wells
  • John Gastil

Abstract

type="main"> Voters develop not only different opinions about politics but also different sets of empirical beliefs. It is less clear how falsifiable beliefs take hold. In particular, it remains unclear as to whether news and campaign messages, moderated by political knowledge, drive the process, or whether deep-seated values principally sway voters' acceptance of factual claims. These contrasting views point to a set of testable hypotheses that we use to refine a model of ideologically-biased empirical belief generation, which we call “knowledge distortion.” We conduct an analysis of survey data on three ballot measures in Washington State, testing hypothesized relationships between voters' empirical beliefs about political issues, news and campaign messages, political knowledge, political values, and partisanship, as well as vote choices on the ballot measures. Our analysis reveals that voters' values and partisanship had the strongest associations with distorted beliefs, which then influenced voting choices. Self-reported levels of exposure to media and campaign messages played a surprisingly limited role. Our findings provide further evidence of politically motivated factual misperceptions on political issues, which have an independent effect on voters' ballot decisions. These misperceptions do not seem to be driven by news media and campaign messages, suggesting that citizens may be generating relevant empirical beliefs based on their underlying political values and ideology.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin Reedy & Chris Wells & John Gastil, 2014. "How Voters Become Misinformed: An Investigation of the Emergence and Consequences of False Factual Beliefs," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1399-1418, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:95:y:2014:i:5:p:1399-1418
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/ssqu.12102
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Goren, 2004. "Political Sophistication and Policy Reasoning: A Reconsideration," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 462-478, July.
    2. Lupia, Arthur, 1994. "Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(1), pages 63-76, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maciel, Marcelo V. & Martins, André C.R., 2020. "Ideologically motivated biases in a multiple issues opinion model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 553(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Schläpfer, Felix & Getzner, Michael, 2020. "Beyond Current Guidelines: A Proposal for Bringing Behavioral Economics to the Design and Analysis of Stated Preference Surveys," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    2. Daniele, Gianmarco & Geys, Benny, 2012. "Public support for institutionalised solidarity: Europeans' reaction to the establishment of eurobonds," Discussion Papers, Research Professorship & Project "The Future of Fiscal Federalism" SP II 2012-112, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Alan Blinder & Alan Krueger, 2004. "What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?," Working Papers 875, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    4. Schläpfer, Felix & Schmitt, Marcel & Roschewitz, Anna, 2008. "Competitive politics, simplified heuristics, and preferences for public goods," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 574-589, April.
    5. Author-Name: Alan S. Blinder & Alan B. Krueger, 2004. "What Does the Public Know about Economic Policy, and How Does It Know It?," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 35(1), pages 327-397.
    6. Maarten C. W. Janssen & Mariya Teteryatnikova, 2015. "On the Positive Role of Negative Political Campaigning," Vienna Economics Papers 1506, University of Vienna, Department of Economics.
    7. Tsuyoshi Hatori & Kiyoshi Kobayashi, 2012. "Knowledge, Political Innovation and Referendum," Chapters, in: Charlie Karlsson & Börje Johansson & Roger R. Stough (ed.), The Regional Economics of Knowledge and Talent, chapter 9, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    8. Katjana Gattermann & Claes H De Vreese, 2017. "The role of candidate evaluations in the 2014 European Parliament elections: Towards the personalization of voting behaviour?," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(3), pages 447-468, September.
    9. Berggren, Niclas & Jordahl, Henrik & Poutvaara, Panu, 2006. "The Looks of a Winner: Beauty, Gender and Electoral Success," IZA Discussion Papers 2311, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Donald Wittman, 2009. "How Pressure Groups Activate Voters and Move Candidates Closer to the Median," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(540), pages 1324-1343, October.
    11. Edmund Malesky & Markus Taussig, 2019. "How Do Firms Feel About Participation by Their Peers in the Regulatory Design Process? An Online Survey Experiment Testing the Substantive Change and Spillover Mechanisms," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 4(2), pages 129-150, June.
    12. Kumlin, Staffan, 2000. "Ideology-driven public opinion formation in Europe: The case of third sector attitudes in Sweden," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Institutions and Social Change FS III 00-202, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    13. James Tilley & Christopher Wlezien, 2008. "Does Political Information Matter? An Experimental Test Relating to Party Positions on Europe," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 56(1), pages 192-214, March.
    14. Robert Deacon & Felix Schläpfer, 2010. "The Spatial Range of Public Goods Revealed Through Referendum Voting," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 47(3), pages 305-328, November.
    15. Simon Niemeyer, 2011. "The Emancipatory Effect of Deliberation: Empirical Lessons from Mini-Publics," Politics & Society, , vol. 39(1), pages 103-140, March.
    16. Valentino Larcinese, 2007. "Does political knowledge increase turnout? Evidence from the 1997 British general election," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 131(3), pages 387-411, June.
    17. George Tridimas, 2010. "Referendum and the choice between monarchy and republic in Greece," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 119-144, June.
    18. Elena Panova, 2007. "Congruence Among Voters and Contributions to Political Campaigns," Cahiers de recherche 0722, CIRPEE.
    19. Cavalcanti, Carina & Schläpfer, Felix & Schmid, Bernhard, 2010. "Public participation and willingness to cooperate in common-pool resource management: A field experiment with fishing communities in Brazil," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 613-622, January.
    20. Srinivas C. Parinandi, 2020. "Policy Inventing and Borrowing among State Legislatures," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(4), pages 852-868, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:95:y:2014:i:5:p:1399-1418. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.