Policymakers and Biased Reasoning About Evidence
In this talk, I will discuss the results of two studies exploring biased reasoning among policymakers. In the first study, involving a national sample of local policymakers in the United States, my research team built on prior work about policymakers discounting the opinions of constituents with whom they disagree on policy issues, exploring whether communicators can prevent this discounting. We replicate prior work showing that policymakers discount the opinions of hypothetical constituents with whom they disagree, but show that unambiguous evidence about a letter-writer’s positive traits can reduce this discounting. In the second study, we explore whether policymakers are influenced by compelling policy evidence from ideologically disparate viewpoints or whether they respond to evidence in an ideologically biased fashion. We find that policymakers are likely to be persuaded by strong, but not weak, evidence, and we find no moderating effect of ideology on the persuasive effects of either strong or weak evidence, suggesting that policymakers do not respond to evidence in a biased fashion. I will discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings as well as avenues for future research.
Daniel E. Bergan
