Counterattitudinal Information Research Articles

Atomic Arguments and Counter-Arguments: How Exposure to Conflicting Information Influences American Public Support for the Use of Nuclear Weapons

Abstract In this paper, we introduce a novel approach for assessing the effectiveness of messaging designed to influence public opinion on the use of nuclear weapons. We argue that messages intended to decrease support for nuclear use are most effective when they meet three conditions. First, they must present subjects with novel counter-attitudinal information or interpretations that were not likely to be already incorporated into subjects’ opinions. Second, they must provide salient information that resonates with the values and concerns of subjects. Third, since, in the real world, the public is likely to hear both arguments and counterarguments for important policy issues, effective messages must be resilient, maintaining their effect even when respondents are exposed to strong, competing messages. We use this framework to test the effects of different messages about the legality of nuclear use, the military effectiveness of nuclear weapons, and the potential for setting precedents for nuclear use by others. We find that most messages have only modest and reversible effects. Alerting subjects to the possibility that using nuclear weapons might set a precedent making American adversaries more likely to use them in the future, however, produces the most significant reduction in support for nuclear use.

Confronting Core Issues: A Critical Assessment of Attitude Polarization Using Tailored Experiments

A long-standing debate in political psychology considers whether individuals update their beliefs and attitudes in the direction of evidence or grow more confident in their convictions when confronted with counter-attitudinal arguments. Though recent studies have shown that instances of the latter tendency, which scholars have termed attitude polarization and “belief backfire,” are rarely observed in settings involving hot-button issues or viral misinformation, we know surprisingly little about how participants respond to information targeting deeply held attitudes, a key condition for triggering attitude polarization. We develop a tailored experimental design that measures participants’ core issue positions and exposes them to personalized counter-attitudinal information using the large language model GPT-3. We find credible evidence of attitude polarization, but only when arguments are contentious and vitriolic. For lower valence counter-attitudinal arguments, attitude polarization is not detected. We conclude by discussing implications for the study of political cognition and the measurement of attitudes.

The More Sophisticated, the More Biased? Testing a New Measure of Political Sophistication on Biased Information Processing

Abstract According to literature, biased information processing increases with political sophistication. The logic behind this relationship is that political sophisticates possess greater cognitive skills and knowledge to defend their prior beliefs. Although political sophistication can be understood as a multidimensional concept, existing research primarily uses general political knowledge as a proxy to assess it. Therefore, we introduce a more rigorous measure of sophistication that gauges individuals’ ability to justify their attitudes with substantive and well-elaborated arguments and put the classic measure of political sophistication to a test. We study these mechanisms in a direct-democratic setting via an online survey, in which 898 Swiss-German voters are exposed to a tailored counterargument on a political referendum. Our results indicate that individuals with higher levels of sophistication evaluate counter-attitudinal information less favorably and hold more stable opinions. While we did not find support for the hypothesis that sophistication leads to selective exposure to consonant information, our analysis points to a reverse mechanism: individuals with lower levels of sophistication exhibit a higher likelihood of exposure to dissonant views. Notably, these results align with the trends reported for general political knowledge and corroborate the validity of using general political knowledge as a proxy for political sophistication.

Celebrating Wins, Lamenting Losses in the Aftermath of Presidential Elections

Abstract: In this paper, we examine media use in the aftermath of the 2004, 2012, and 2020 presidential elections in the United States. Specifically, we test whether members of the party who won the election bask in reflected glory (BIRG; i.e., seek out pro-attitudinal media after preferred candidate wins) or whether members of the losing party cut off reflected failure (CORF; i.e., cut off ties with their party after a loss by decreasing their use of pro-attitudinal media). We also examine whether individuals whose candidate lost use pro-attitudinal media to repair their identity, or engage in information utility behaviors by seeking out counter-attitudinal information to learn about the opposing party following their win. Using two waves of survey data from the 2004, 2012, and 2020 US presidential elections, we find support for the BIRGing hypothesis. However, we did not find support for any of the hypotheses associated with losing the elections.

Hypnotic and direct suggestions affect attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help

ABSTRACT This study investigated the impact of hypnotic suggestions on improving attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help (ATSPPH). The study administered the Chinese version of the ATSPPH scale on 303 college students, of which 61 with low levels of ATSPPH were recruited as the participants (male: 18; female: 43). All participants were tested with the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A, prior to the formal experiment and assigned with balancing hypnotic susceptibility in hypnotic suggestion, relaxation, or control groups. The main results were as follows: (1) counter-attitudinal information significantly improved explicit ATSPPH only for the hypnotic suggestion and relaxation groups, (2) the hypnotic suggestion group exhibited improvement in implicit ATSPPH and (3) a difference was observed between explicit and implicit attitudes in the process of providing counter-attitudinal information when changing ATSPPH.

Partisan Identity, Counter-Attitudinal Information, and Selective Criticism in India

Partisan Identity, Counter-Attitudinal Information, and Selective Criticism in India

How Does Multi-Platform Social Media Use Lead to Biased News Engagement? Examining the Role of Counter-Attitudinal Incidental Exposure, Cognitive Elaboration, and Network Homogeneity

Using an online panel survey in the United States, this study examines how multi-platform social media use impacts news engagement on social media. Results show that multi-platform social media use prompts incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal news and further encourages people to cognitively elaborate on the counter-attitudinal information, which in turn contributes to news engagement on social media. However, news engagement is performed in a biased way that is supportive of like-minded content and non-supportive of counter-attitudinal content. Furthermore, the indirect effect of multi-platform social media use on biased news engagement becomes stronger when one’s network is more homogeneous. Although studies have pointed to the democratic prospects of multi-platform social media use as it leads to cross-cutting exposure, our results suggest that it could lead users to engage with news in ways that confirm their pre-existing attitudes and disconfirm counter-attitudinal ones.

Just a Glance, or More? Pathways from Counter-Attitudinal Incidental Exposure to Attitude (De)Polarization Through Response Behaviors and Cognitive Elaboration

AbstractUsing two-wave U.S. panel survey data, this study proposes a moderated serial mediation model to examine through what paths and under what conditions incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal information on social media would enhance or mitigate polarization. The findings suggest that such exposure can indirectly polarize attitude by eliciting passive scanning behaviors, but it can also indirectly attenuate attitude polarization first through active engagement with the counter-attitudinal information, then through cognitively elaborating on the information. However, the indirect depolarizing effect of incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal information on citizens’ attitude depends on the extent to which they are instrumentally motivated. The indirect effect occurs when an individual’s perceived utility of counter-attitudinal information is at a high and a middle level, but not at a low level. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Revising mental representations of faces based on new diagnostic information

Extending evidence for the rapid revision of mental representations of what other people are like, we explored whether people also rapidly revise their representations of what others look like. After learning to ascribe positive or negative behavioral information to a target person and generating a visualization of their face in a reverse-correlation task, participants learned new information that was (a) counter-attitudinal and diagnostic about the person's character or (b) neutral and non-diagnostic, and then they generated a second visualization. Ratings of these visualizations in separate samples of participants consistently revealed revision effects: Time 2 visualizations assimilated to the counter-attitudinal information. Weaker revision effects also emerged after learning neutral information, suggesting that the evaluative extremity of visualizations may dilute when encountering any additional information. These findings indicate that representations of others' appearance may change upon learning more about them, particularly when this new information is counter-attitudinal and diagnostic.

Persuading the Implicit Mind: Changing Negative Implicit Evaluations With an 8-Minute Podcast

Implicit evaluations can be malleable via reinterpretation of previously encountered evidence. Here, we report three studies (N = 1,007) investigating the robustness of this updating modality using ecologically realistic materials. Participants were first introduced to a target who killed an endangered black rhino in Namibia. They then listened to a real podcast providing counterattitudinal information on the benefits of trophy hunting. The podcast resulted in considerable revisions of initially negative implicit evaluations toward positivity, consistently across implicit measures (affect misattribution procedures vs. implicit association test), samples (American students vs. nonstudents from various countries), study settings (lab vs. online), and the presence versus absence of a memory retrieval manipulation prompting reflection on participants’ views on trophy hunting. Taken together, these findings suggest that reinterpretation can shift implicit evaluations of even highly negative targets, including under conditions of external validity.

Encouraging Reading of Diverse Political Viewpoints with a Browser Widget

The Internet gives individuals more choice in political news and information sources and more tools to filter out disagreeable information. Citing the preference described by selective exposure theory — people prefer information that supports their beliefs and avoid counter-attitudinal information — observers warn that people may use these tools to access only agreeable information and thus live in ideological echo chambers. We report on a field deployment of a browser extension that showed users feedback about the political lean of their weekly and all time reading behaviors. Compared to a control group, showing feedback led to a modest move toward balanced exposure, corresponding to 1-2 visits per week to ideologically opposing sites or 5-10 additional visits per week to centrist sites.

Differentiated evaluation of counter-conditioned stimuli as a function of right-wing authoritarianism

Right Wing Authoritarianism (i.e., RWA) is associated with enhanced conservatism and social prejudice. Because research linking RWA to attitudes is largely correlational (i.e., it provides control for neither RWA nor attitude learning), it is not clear how RWA relates to attitude learning dynamics. We addressed this question in 11 evaluative conditioning experiments that ensured rigorous control of the affective learning setting. Results from two integrative data analyses suggest that (i) individuals scoring higher in RWA show a stronger acquisition of positive attitudes, and that (ii) the residuals of this stronger acquisition remain even after exposure to counter-attitudinal information. Implications of these findings for research on RWA and its link to social prejudice are discussed.

Filthy fruit! Confirmation bias and novel food

Fruit and vegetable consumption is worldwide too low, resulting in poor diet quality and health-related problems. A cognitive factor that might contribute to this low consumption is confirmation bias. Confirmation bias has been established in anxiety research and comprises the tendency to search for reinforcing negative information, while ignoring counter attitudinal information. If applicable to food, asking for negative food information reinforces the negative attitude and decreases the willingness to try (novel) food. The aim of the current study was twofold. First, to examine if confirmation bias translates to food stimuli. Second, to investigate if this bias is exaggerated in persons with higher levels of food neophobia. To this end, 117 participants (age M = 21.45, SD = 4.48) carried out an online study. They filled in the food neophobia scale (FNS) and performed a search for additional information scale (SAIS) task. Four novel fruits were used, two looking tasteful (pomelo and rose apple) and two looking non-tasteful (black sapote and noni fruit). Participants rated their willingness to eat these fruits and subsequently could indicate how eager they were to receive positive or negative information regarding that fruit. The results indicated that the participants were more willing to try the tasteful looking fruits than the non-tasteful. Additionally, higher levels of food neophobia coincided with less willingness to eat all fruits. Confirmation bias was observed, more negative information was requested for the non-tasteful than for the tasteful fruits. This bias was not related to levels of food neophobia. These results are important as confirmation bias might make people even more negative towards novel foods and could contribute to even less fruit and vegetable consumption, especially when they look less appetizing.

Can AI Enhance People’s Support for Online Moderation and Their Openness to Dissimilar Political Views?

Abstract Although artificial intelligence is blamed for many societal challenges, it also has underexplored potential in political contexts online. We rely on six preregistered experiments in three countries (N = 6,728) to test the expectation that AI and AI-assisted humans would be perceived more favorably than humans (a) across various content moderation, generation, and recommendation scenarios and (b) when exposing individuals to counter-attitudinal political information. Contrary to the preregistered hypotheses, participants see human agents as more just than AI across the scenarios tested, with the exception of news recommendations. At the same time, participants are not more open to counter-attitudinal information attributed to AI rather than a human or an AI-assisted human. These findings, which—with minor variations—emerged across countries, scenarios, and issues, suggest that human intervention is preferred online and that people reject dissimilar information regardless of its source. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.Lay SummaryIn the era of unprecedented political divides and misinformation, artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms are often seen as the culprits. In contrast to these dominant narratives, we argued that AI might be seen as being less biased than a human in online political contexts. We relied on six preregistered experiments in three countries (the United Sates, Spain, Poland) to test whether internet users perceive AI and AI-assisted humans more favorably than simply humans; (a) across various distinct scenarios online, and (b) when exposing people to opposing political information on a range of contentious issues. Contrary to our expectations, human agents were consistently perceived more favorably than AI except when recommending news. These findings suggest that people prefer human intervention in most online political contexts.

Effects of news sharing and discussion network heterogeneity on incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal political information on Facebook

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the mechanism underlying the process where individuals come across political disagreement in online communication networks. For that, this study focuses on two potential factors affecting incidental exposure to counter-attitudinal information (IXC) on Facebook: (1) news sharing behavior and (2) discussion network heterogeneity. A two-wave national survey was conducted during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaigns (Wave 1: Sept. 27– 13 October 2016, N = 1,623; Wave 2: Oct. 27– 8 November 2016, N = 637). The results indicate that news sharing and discussion network heterogeneity are both positively associated with IXC on Facebook, showing the critical roles played by these two variables in incidental exposure to political disagreement on social media. More importantly, news sharing and discussion network heterogeneity were found to sequentially mediate the positive relationship between overall use of Facebook and IXC, providing a more detailed mapping of the underlying mechanism in the basic relationship between general Facebook use and IXC. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Vicarious self-affirmation: Understanding key mechanisms

ABSTRACT Recent work on self-affirmation, or buffering against self-threats by affirming a separate domain of the self, has investigated the use of manipulations via narrative messages to increase self-appraisal (i.e., positive thoughts toward the self) and reduce message derogation. This study furthers this initial work by investigating the dual roles of identification with a character and value congruency in facilitating greater self-integrity (i.e., feelings of moral and adaptive adequacy) and openness to counter-attitudinal information. An experiment (N = 286) exposed participants to separate narrative messages to test whether identification with the main character, and strongly holding the value affirmed for the character, influence global self-integrity for audience members. Results demonstrate that such a vicarious self-affirmation experience does lead to greater self-integrity, and that this effect is strongest at high levels of identification with the main character. However, when identification is low, whether or not the value affirmed is one strongly held by the audience member determines whether self-integrity is bolstered. Finally, we show that increased self-integrity through such a vicarious experience leads to greater openness toward a subsequently presented abortion article that was attitudinally incongruent.

What Motivates Reasoning? A Theory of Goal‐Dependent Political Evaluation

AbstractRather than exhibiting bias or open‐minded reasoning at baseline, we argue that information processing is motivated by whatever goals a context makes salient. Thus, if politics feels like debate, people will be motivated to argue for their side. If politics feels like deliberation, they will be motivated to seek consensus through open‐minded processing. Results from three experiments demonstrate: (1) Politics evokes thoughts similar to conflictual contexts and dissimilar from deliberative contexts. (2) Consequently, information labeled “political” primes the motivation to counterargue, leading to opinion polarization. Absent such labeling, no such motivation is evident, explaining why bias is common but not inherent to politics. (3) Despite this capacity for bias, people can be motivated to actively process and accept counterattitudinal information by simply making the value of open‐mindedness salient. This suggests open‐minded discourse is possible even absent motivation to evaluate information accurately. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for political discourse.

Exploring the Contextual Renewal of Conditioned Attitudes After Counterconditioning

Research on contextualized attitude change suggests that, even when coun-terattitudinal information effectively influences evaluations in the context in which this information was learned, previously formed attitudes sometimes continue to determine evaluations in any other context (contextual renewal). Expanding on evidence for contextual renewal in attitude change based on verbal information, five experiments tested the emergence of contextual renewal in evaluative conditioning, involving pairings of a conditioned stimulus with a valenced unconditioned stimulus. Counter to the notion of contextual renewal, counterconditioning changed initially conditioned attitudes to the same extent irrespective of the context. Verbal information presented with the same procedural parameters produced contextual renewal effects only when evaluations were not measured between the formation of initial attitudes and the learning of counterattitudinal information. The results suggest two previously unidentified boundary conditions of contextualized attitude change that need to be reconciled with extant theories of evaluative learning.

Online products and consumers: Partisan ratings and mechanisms for affective polarization

Star ratings play major roles in informing consumer decisions on major e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com. When people evaluate political books, for example, they might gauge whether star rating favorability scores align with their pre-existing political attitudes. The attitudinal stance of these online cues could invariably trigger responses that worsen the affective divide between partisans. However, few studies have identified and explained the mechanisms underlying affective polarization. Using two online experiments, we examine the mechanisms through which ratings induce affective polarization. Findings support warranting theory by consistently showing that counter-attitudinal ratings indirectly drive up affective polarization by increasing positive in-party affect via perceived manipulation. By contrast, pro-attitudinal star ratings polarize by increasing positive in-party affect through perceived in-party prototypicality. These findings challenge assumptions that affective polarization is solely characterized by negative out-party affect, and driven mainly by exposure to counter-attitudinal information.

The influence of physical attractiveness on attitude confidence and resistance to change

It is well established that the physical attractiveness of the source of a message can influence recipients' attitudes about the message proposal. The current research is the first to examine if attractiveness is also capable of affecting attitude confidence and resistance to change. Experiment 1 revealed that an attractive source decreased recipients' attitude confidence, even when it did not affect attitudes. Experiment 2 replicated this novel finding and identified a critical condition under which this effect is more likely to occur. Specifically, attractiveness only reduced attitude confidence when it was unrelated to the merits of the persuasive proposal. This moderation by message relevance suggests that people can correct the confidence in their judgment for inappropriate sources of bias. Experiment 3 specified the conditions under which correction is more likely to take place on attitudes and on attitude confidence. Specifically, correction for source attractiveness on attitudes required an explicit correction instruction but correction on attitude confidence occurred regardless of the instruction. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that the effect of attractiveness in reducing attitude confidence is consequential by making attitudes less resistant to change when facing counter-attitudinal information. Taken together, the present research demonstrated that attractiveness can reduce attitude confidence as well as undermine subsequent resistance to counter-attitudinal messages, but only when attractiveness was viewed as an unwanted biasing factor (i.e., the message topic was unrelated to attractiveness).