Abstract
Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens’ rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing “knowledge constraints” on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, suggesting that knowledge constraints on motivated reasoning may not fully allay normative concerns of bias in the domain of international relations.
Highlights
One’s store of knowledge can be the target of ego- and belief-protective bias
Many Americans share social representations about their country that hold it to be an egalitarian meritocracy; this may be how motivated reasoning prompts over a quarter of the population to believe that the Constitution guarantees a job, and nearly half to believe it guarantees health care and is the source of the communist tenet “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (Carpini & Keeter, 1996, p. 98)
Instead of being rooted in a greater knowledge of relevant history, participants’ preference for a stereotypically Realist foreign policy correlated with greater ignorance of history, and higher levels of blind patriotism. (Blind patriotism is “characterized by unquestioning positive evaluation, staunch allegiance, and intolerance of criticism,” while constructive patriotism is characterized by “questioning and criticism of current group practices that are driven by a desire for positive change” [Schatz, Staub, & Lavine, 1999, p. 153]). These results suggested that rather than emanating from a solid grasp of history and its lessons, preferences for a stereotypically Realist foreign policy may be tied to a certain kind of historical ignorance, along with blind attachment to the national in-group. (See, Kertzer & McGraw, 2012, in which folk realism was found to correlate with national attachment, but not with a much broader measure of political knowledge)
Summary
One’s store of knowledge can be the target of ego- and belief-protective bias. 604) observed that the “ego fabricates and revises [personal] history, thereby engaging in practices not ordinarily admired in historians,” but commonly employed by totalitarian regimes. In a classic paper, Greenwald These practices – egocentricity, “beneffectance” (the self being held responsible for positive but not negative outcomes), and cognitive conservatism – distort our personal histories, creating a biased store of knowledge. Selective recall can affect cognitions about others, as well as about aspects of “shared reality” (Eitam, Miele, & Higgins, 2013). Many Americans share social representations about their country that hold it to be an egalitarian meritocracy; this may be how motivated reasoning prompts over a quarter of the population to believe that the Constitution guarantees a job, and nearly half to believe it guarantees health care and is the source of the communist tenet “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” (Carpini & Keeter, 1996, p. 98)
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