IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/anname/v700y2022i1p41-54.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Americans’ Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act: What Role Do Beliefs Play?

Author

Listed:
  • Gabriel Miao Li
  • Josh Pasek
  • Jon A. Krosnick
  • Tobias H. Stark
  • Jennifer Agiesta
  • Gaurav Sood
  • Trevor Tompson
  • Wendy Gross

Abstract

How do people form their attitudes toward complex policy issues? Although there has long been an assumption that people consider the various components of those issues and come to an overall assessment, a growing body of recent work has instead suggested that people may reach summary judgments as a function of heuristic cues and goal-oriented rationalizations. This study examines how well a component-based model fits Americans’ evaluations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, an important and highly contentious piece of legislation that contained several constituent parts. Despite strong partisan disagreement about the law, we find that Democrats and Republicans both appear to evaluate the law as a function of their beliefs and what the law would do as well as their confidence in those beliefs. This finding implies that correcting misperceptions and increasing awareness of the components of legislation have the potential to change attitudes.

Suggested Citation

  • Gabriel Miao Li & Josh Pasek & Jon A. Krosnick & Tobias H. Stark & Jennifer Agiesta & Gaurav Sood & Trevor Tompson & Wendy Gross, 2022. "Americans’ Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act: What Role Do Beliefs Play?," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 700(1), pages 41-54, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:700:y:2022:i:1:p:41-54
    DOI: 10.1177/00027162221098020
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00027162221098020
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00027162221098020?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. Ajzen, Icek, 1991. "The theory of planned behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 179-211, December.
    2. Gordon Pennycook & David G. Rand, 2022. "Nudging Social Media toward Accuracy," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 700(1), pages 152-164, March.
    3. 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.
    4. Salil D. Benegal & Lyle A. Scruggs, 2018. "Correcting misinformation about climate change: the impact of partisanship in an experimental setting," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 148(1), pages 61-80, May.
    5. Heidi J. Larson, 2018. "The biggest pandemic risk? Viral misinformation," Nature, Nature, vol. 562(7727), pages 309-309, October.
    6. Lodge, Milton & Steenbergen, Marco R. & Brau, Shawn, 1995. "The Responsive Voter: Campaign Information and the Dynamics of Candidate Evaluation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(2), pages 309-326, June.
    7. Cecilie S. Traberg & Jon Roozenbeek & Sander van der Linden, 2022. "Psychological Inoculation against Misinformation: Current Evidence and Future Directions," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 700(1), pages 136-151, March.
    8. 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)

    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. 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.
    2. Ahlquist, John S. & Ichino, Nahomi & Wittenberg, Jason & Ziblatt, Daniel, 2018. "How do voters perceive changes to the rules of the game? Evidence from the 2014 Hungarian elections," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 906-919.
    3. Rogers, Todd & Nickerson, David W., 2013. "Can Inaccurate Beliefs about Incumbents be Changed? And Can Reframing Change Votes?," Working Paper Series rwp13-018, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    4. Brad R. Taylor, 2020. "The psychological foundations of rational ignorance: biased heuristics and decision costs," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 70-88, March.
    5. Baccaro, Lucio & Bremer, Björn & Neimanns, Erik, 2020. "Is the euro up for grabs? Evidence from a survey experiment," MPIfG Discussion Paper 20/10, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    6. Monika Pompeo & Nina Serdarevic, 2021. "Is information enough? The case of Republicans and climate change," Discussion Papers 2021-08, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    7. Charlotte Grynberg & Stefanie Walter & Fabio Wasserfallen, 2020. "Expectations, vote choice and opinion stability since the 2016 Brexit referendum," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(2), pages 255-275, June.
    8. Katjana Gattermann & Claes De Vreese & Wouter van der Brug, 2016. "Evaluations of the Spitzenkandidaten: The Role of Information and News Exposure in Citizens’ Preference Formation," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(1), pages 37-54.
    9. Christenson, Dino P. & Goldfarb, Jillian L. & Kriner, Douglas L., 2017. "Costs, benefits, and the malleability of public support for “Fracking”," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 407-417.
    10. Lucio Baccaro & Björn Bremer & Erik Neimanns, 2021. "Till austerity do us part? A survey experiment on support for the euro in Italy," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(3), pages 401-423, September.
    11. Brendan Nyhan, 2011. "The limited effects of testimony on political persuasion," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 283-312, September.
    12. Maria Andersson & Ola Eriksson & Chris Von Borgstede, 2012. "The Effects of Environmental Management Systems on Source Separation in the Work and Home Settings," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 4(6), pages 1-17, June.
    13. Tran Huy Phuong & Thanh Trung Hieu, 2015. "Predictors of Entrepreneurial Intentions of Undergraduate Students in Vietnam: An Empirical Study," International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, Human Resource Management Academic Research Society, International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, vol. 5(8), pages 46-55, August.
    14. Peng Cheng & Zhe Ouyang & Yang Liu, 0. "The effect of information overload on the intention of consumers to adopt electric vehicles," Transportation, Springer, vol. 0, pages 1-20.
    15. Alsalem, Amani & Fry, Marie-Louise & Thaichon, Park, 2020. "To donate or to waste it: Understanding posthumous organ donation attitude," Australasian marketing journal, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 87-97.
    16. Benoît Lécureux & Adrien Bonnet & Ouassim Manout & Jaâfar Berrada & Louafi Bouzouina, 2022. "Acceptance of Shared Autonomous Vehicles: A Literature Review of stated choice experiments," Working Papers hal-03814947, HAL.
    17. Kristin Thomas & Evalill Nilsson & Karin Festin & Pontus Henriksson & Mats Lowén & Marie Löf & Margareta Kristenson, 2020. "Associations of Psychosocial Factors with Multiple Health Behaviors: A Population-Based Study of Middle-Aged Men and Women," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(4), pages 1-17, February.
    18. Kamruzzaman, Md. & Baker, Douglas & Washington, Simon & Turrell, Gavin, 2013. "Residential dissonance and mode choice," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 12-28.
    19. Ficko, Andrej & Boncina, Andrej, 2013. "Probabilistic typology of management decision making in private forest properties," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 34-43.
    20. Muhammad Shahid Qureshi & Saadat Saeed & Syed Waleed Mehmood Wasti, 2016. "The impact of various entrepreneurial interventions during the business plan competition on the entrepreneur identity aspirations of participants," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 6(1), pages 1-18, December.

    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:sae:anname:v:700:y:2022:i:1:p:41-54. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.