People are less likely to accept new information when it conflicts with the political outcomes they want, according to research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:General.
The study provides some clues as to why the political climate in the United States appears to be increasingly polarized.
This bias towards confirming information in belief revision has been suggested to underpin belief polarization.”.
In other words, people were the most likely to change their beliefs if the new information lined up with the election outcome they wanted.
“We did not investigate biased search for new information, or biased evaluation of new information, but only bias in belief revision,” Tappin said.
It remains an open question, for example, whether confirmation and desirability biases are similarly dissociable when we search for, and/or evaluate new information.”.
The study, “The Heart Trumps the Head: Desirability Bias in Political Belief Revision“, was also co-authored by Leslie van der Leer and Ryan T. McKay. »