IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0259416.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How political partisanship can shape memories and perceptions of identical protest events

Author

Listed:
  • Eden Hennessey
  • Matthew Feinberg
  • Anne E Wilson

Abstract

It is well-recognized that increasingly polarized American partisans subscribe to sharply diverging worldviews. Can partisanship influence Americans to view the world around them differently from one another? In the current research, we explored partisans’ recollections of objective events that occurred during identical footage of a real protest. All participants viewed the same 87-second compilation of footage from a Women’s March protest. Trump supporters (vs. others) recalled seeing a greater number of negative protest tactics and events (e.g., breaking windows, burning things), even though many of these events did not occur. False perceptions among Trump supporters, in turn, predicted beliefs that the protesters’ tactics were extreme, ultimately accounting for greater opposition to the movement and its cause. Our findings point to the possibility of a feedback loop wherein partisanship underlies different perceptions of the exact same politically relevant event, which in turn may allow observers to cling more tightly to their original partisan stance.

Suggested Citation

  • Eden Hennessey & Matthew Feinberg & Anne E Wilson, 2021. "How political partisanship can shape memories and perceptions of identical protest events," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-13, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0259416
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259416
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0259416
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0259416&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0259416?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Charles S. Taber & Milton Lodge, 2006. "Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(3), pages 755-769, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Tetsuro Kobayashi & Fumiaki Taka & Takahisa Suzuki, 2021. "Can “Googling” correct misbelief? Cognitive and affective consequences of online search," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(9), pages 1-16, September.
    2. Joseph A Hamm & Corwin Smidt & Roger C Mayer, 2019. "Understanding the psychological nature and mechanisms of political trust," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(5), pages 1-20, May.
    3. Michael Carolan, 2020. "Filtering perceptions of climate change and biotechnology: values and views among Colorado farmers and ranchers," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 159(1), pages 121-139, March.
    4. Barrera, Oscar & Guriev, Sergei & Henry, Emeric & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2020. "Facts, alternative facts, and fact checking in times of post-truth politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 182(C).
    5. Faia, Ester & Fuster, Andreas & Pezone, Vincenzo & Zafar, Basit, 2021. "Biases in information selection and processing: Survey evidence from the pandemic," SAFE Working Paper Series 307, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    6. Mark K. McBeth & Donna L. Lybecker & James W. Stoutenborough, 2016. "Do stakeholders analyze their audience? The communication switch and stakeholder personal versus public communication choices," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 49(4), pages 421-444, December.
    7. Erik C. Nisbet & Kathryn E. Cooper & R. Kelly Garrett, 2015. "The Partisan Brain," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 658(1), pages 36-66, March.
    8. Dickinson, David L., 2020. "Deliberation Enhances the Confirmation Bias: An Examination of Politics and Religion," IZA Discussion Papers 13241, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    9. Ronja Sczepanski, 2023. "European by action: How voting reshapes nested identities," European Union Politics, , vol. 24(4), pages 751-770, December.
    10. Tomi Rajala, 2019. "Mind the Information Expectation Gap," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(1), pages 104-125, March.
    11. Ingar Haaland & Christopher Roth, 2023. "Beliefs about Racial Discrimination and Support for Pro-Black Policies," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(1), pages 40-53, January.
    12. Jensen, Carsten & Naumann, Elias, 2016. "Increasing pressures and support for public healthcare in Europe," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(6), pages 698-705.
    13. Linda M. Fogg & Lawrence C. Hamilton & Erin S. Bell, 2020. "Views of the Highway: Infrastructure Reality, Perceptions, and Politics," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, October.
    14. Esterling, Kevin M. & Fung, Archon & Lee, Taeku, 2013. "Ideology, Deliberation and Persuasion within Small Groups: A Randomized Field Experiment on Fiscal Policy," Working Paper Series rwp13-036, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    15. Byungdoo Kim & David L. Kay & Jonathon P. Schuldt, 2021. "Will I have to move because of climate change? Perceived likelihood of weather- or climate-related relocation among the US public," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 1-8, March.
    16. Tao, Ran & Li, Jianing & Shen, Liwei & Yang, Sijia, 2023. "Hope over fear: The interplay between threat information and hope appeal corrections in debunking early COVID-19 misinformation," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 333(C).
    17. Eric Plutzer & A. Lee Hannah, 2018. "Teaching climate change in middle schools and high schools: investigating STEM education’s deficit model," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 305-317, August.
    18. John M. Carey & Andrew M. Guess & Peter J. Loewen & Eric Merkley & Brendan Nyhan & Joseph B. Phillips & Jason Reifler, 2022. "The ephemeral effects of fact-checks on COVID-19 misperceptions in the United States, Great Britain and Canada," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(2), pages 236-243, February.
    19. Christopher Gelpi, 2010. "Performing on Cue? The Formation of Public Opinion Toward War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 54(1), pages 88-116, February.
    20. Caroline Le Pennec & Vincent Pons, 2019. "How Do Campaigns Shape Vote Choice? Multi-Country Evidence from 62 Elections and 56 TV Debates," NBER Working Papers 26572, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    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:plo:pone00:0259416. 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: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    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.