Not All Motivated Reasoning is Partisan: Perceived Vulnerability to Infectious Disease and Perceived Harmfulness Condition the Influence of Partisanship on Reasoning About COVID 19

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  • Cassario, Abigail
    • Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Political Science
Abstract
  • Citizens are biased information processors, perceiving the world in line with cues sent to them by elites. As such, citizens might be deficient in their ability to hold elite agents responsible for policy failures. In this paper, I argue that an exception to this general pattern is when citizens’personalities introduce accuracy goals into their reasoning and thus lead them to hold elites accountable. I test this argument in the context of the COVID 19 pandemic in a diverse sample of N = 1885 Americans, and a two-wave panel study of n = 650 Americans. I find that a personality construct, Perceived Vulnerability to Infectious Disease (henceforth PVD), structures partisans’ perceptions of how harmful COVID 19 is, with those high in PVD being more likely to accept evidence that the disease is deadly. The effect is particularly strong for Republicans, for whom a factor of PVD moderates the effect of partisanship on perceptions of virus harmfulness. Harm perceptions in turn led voters to attribute responsibility for the crisis to political elites.
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  • In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
Advisor
  • Conover, Pamela J.
  • Ryan, Timothy J.
  • Hetherington, Marc J.
Degree
  • Master of Arts
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2021
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