Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs.
@article{Cohen2003PartyOP, title={Party over policy: The dominating impact of group influence on political beliefs.}, author={Geoffrey L. Cohen}, journal={Journal of personality and social psychology}, year={2003}, volume={85 5}, pages={ 808-22 } }
Four studies demonstrated both the power of group influence in persuasion and people's blindness to it. Even under conditions of effortful processing, attitudes toward a social policy depended almost exclusively upon the stated position of one's political party. This effect overwhelmed the impact of both the policy's objective content and participants' ideological beliefs (Studies 1-3), and it was driven by a shift in the assumed factual qualities of the policy and in its perceived moral…
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