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- Title
Do Conservative Beliefs Predict Rationality? An Exploration of Fallacious Reasoning and Political News Sources.
- Authors
Tait, Veronika; Tanner, Christopher; Allred, Samantha; Ballard, Remington
- Abstract
Researchers have found differences between the ideological beliefs and preferred news sources of the major political parties in the United States (U.S.). However, few researchers explored potential differences in logical reasoning by party. We sought to replicate previously published ideological differences between Democrats and Republicans, examined their rationality using items from classic decision-making literature, and investigated the role of voters’ political news sources in decision-making. Surveying 239 Democrats and 117 Republicans, using Amazon Mechanical Turk, we posited three predictions. The first is that Democrats would disagree with politically conservative statements, agree that political news is being reported fairly, and disapprove of former President Donald Trump’s actions. We confirmed these predictions. We also predicted that the more conservative statements participants agreed with, the lower their rationality score and this hypothesis was confirmed. Lastly, we predicted that participants who relied on right-leaning media would score lower on a rationality test than those individuals who relied on center or left-leaning media. We found that voters who relied on Fox News scored lower on the rationality test than those who relied on National Public Radio.
- Subjects
UNITED States political parties; ATTRIBUTION of news; TRUMP, Donald, 1946-; NATIONAL Public Radio Inc.; FOX News; CONSERVATIVES; PUBLIC radio; EX-presidents
- Publication
Journal of Behavioral & Social Sciences, 2021, Vol 8, Issue 2, p153
- ISSN
2375-8899
- Publication type
Article