Learning Together Slowly: Bayesian Learning about Political Facts
@article{Hill2017LearningTS, title={Learning Together Slowly: Bayesian Learning about Political Facts}, author={Seth J. Hill}, journal={The Journal of Politics}, year={2017}, volume={79}, pages={1403 - 1418} }
Although many studies suggest that voters learn about political facts with prejudice toward their preexisting beliefs, none have fully characterized all inputs to Bayes’ Rule, leaving uncertainty about the magnitude of bias. This paper evaluates political learning by first highlighting the importance of careful measures of each input and then presenting a statistical model and experiment that measure the magnitude of departure from Bayesian learning. Subjects learn as cautious Bayesians…
64 Citations
Bayesian or biased? Analytic thinking and political belief updating
- PsychologyCognition
- 2020
Optimal Persuasion under Confirmation Bias: Theory and Evidence From a Registered Report
- EconomicsJournal of Experimental Political Science
- 2021
Political actors face a trade-off when they try to influence the beliefs of voters about the effects of policy proposals. They want to sway voters maximally, yet voters may discount predictions…
The Imperfect Beliefs Voting Model
- Economics
- 2016
In real-life elections, voters do not have full information over the policy platforms proposed by political parties. Instead, they form (imprecise) beliefs. I propose a new model of partisan…
Experimental Measurement of Misperception in Political Beliefs
- PsychologyJournal of Experimental Political Science
- 2021
Recent research suggests widespread misperception about the political views of others. Measuring perceptions often relies on instruments that do not separate uncertainty from inaccuracy. We present…
Experimental Measurement of Misperception in Political Beliefs* Journal of Experimental Political Science
- Psychology
- 2021
Recent research suggests widespread misperception about the political views of others. Measuring perceptions often relies on instruments that do not separate uncertainty from inaccuracy. We present…
The evidence for motivated reasoning in climate change preference formation
- PsychologyNature Climate Change
- 2019
Despite a scientific consensus, citizens are divided when it comes to climate change — often along political lines. Democrats or liberals tend to believe that human activity is a primary cause of…
Self-Awareness of Political Knowledge
- PhilosophyPolitical Behavior
- 2018
Despite widespread concern over false beliefs about politically-relevant facts, little is known about how strongly Americans believe their answers to poll questions. I propose a conceptual framework…
The Distortion of Related Beliefs
- PsychologyAmerican Journal of Political Science
- 2019
When forming beliefs about themselves, politics, and how the world works more generally, people often face a tension between conclusions they inherently wish to reach and those which are plausible.…
Biased belief in the Bayesian brain: A deeper look at the evidence
- PsychologyConsciousness and Cognition
- 2019
Motivated Reasoning and Democratic Accountability
- Political ScienceAmerican Political Science Review
- 2021
Does motivated reasoning harm democratic accountability? Substantial evidence from political behavior research indicates that voters have “directional motives” beyond accuracy, which is often taken…
References
SHOWING 1-10 OF 50 REFERENCES
Managing Self-Confidence ∗
- Psychology
- 2014
Stylized evidence suggests that people process information about their own ability in a biased manner. We provide a precise characterization of the nature and extent of these biases. We directly…
Partisan Bias and the Bayesian Ideal in the Study of Public Opinion
- Political ScienceThe Journal of Politics
- 2009
Bayes’ Theorem is increasingly used as a benchmark against which to judge the quality of citizens’ thinking, but some of its implications are not well understood. A common claim is that Bayesians…
MISPERCEPTIONS ABOUT PERCEPTUAL BIAS
- Psychology
- 1999
▪ Abstract Do people assimilate new information in an efficient and unbiased manner—that is, do they update prior beliefs in accordance with Bayes' rule? Or are they selective in the way that they…
Rational Learning and Partisan Attitudes
- Economics
- 1998
Theory: Characterizing voters as rational actors who update their party affiliations based on a Bayesian assimilation of new information, Achen (1992) showed that a revisionist model of party…
Diverging Opinions
- Economics
- 2007
We commonly observe cases where two people who see the same evidence draw opposite conclusions, and that additional information seems only to polarize them further. One view of this is that it…
Partisan Perceptual Bias and the Information Environment
- Psychology
- 2012
Perceptual bias occurs when beliefs deviate from reality. Democrats and Republicans are thought to be especially susceptible to this type of biased-information processing. And yet we know little…
Money, Time, and Political Knowledge: Distinguishing Quick Recall and Political Learning Skills
- Psychology
- 2008
Surveys provide widely cited measures of political knowledge. Do seemingly arbitrary features of survey interviews affect their validity? Our answer comes from experiments embedded in a…
Democratic Accountability and Retrospective Voting: A Laboratory Experiment
- Economics
- 2012
Understanding the incentives of politicians requires understanding the nature of voting behavior. I conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate whether voters focus on the problem of electoral…
Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters’ Limitations in Controlling Incumbents
- EconomicsAmerican Political Science Review
- 2012
Are citizens competent to assess the performance of incumbent politicians? Observational studies cast doubt on voter competence by documenting several biases in retrospective assessments of…
Is Voter Competence Good for Voters?: Information, Rationality, and Democratic Performance
- EconomicsAmerican Political Science Review
- 2014
A long research tradition in behavioral political science evaluates the performance of democracy by examining voter competence. This literature got its start arguing that voters' lack of information…