Evidence Can Change Partisan Minds: Rethinking the Bounds of Motivated Reasoning

Can factual information change partisan opinions? According to theories of partisan motivated reasoning, citizens maintain their partisan viewpoints by dismissing counter-attitudinal information while uncritically accepting evidence that supports their views. Contrary to this claim, I find that citizens sensibly update their opinions about highly contentious issues when presented with new information. In three survey experiments with 7200 participants and an observational study leveraging a sudden flow of new information, my results indicate that people respond to the strength of evidence when processing new information. Partisans changed their policy opinions in the same direction in response to the same information, and often converged toward the evidence. They generally did not diverge except when primed to feel adversarial toward the opposing party or when exposed to arguments loaded with insults. Overall, these results suggest that people may engage in biased information processing when they are induced to feel defensive about their partisan viewpoints, but not by default.