Interpreting Performance Information: Motivated Reasoning or Unbiased Comprehension

By Martin Baekgaard, Søren Serritzlew. 2016

174 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A main rationale of performance information is to empower citizens to make informed decisions by presenting them with unambiguous information about the performance of institutions. However, even objective, clear, and unambiguous performance information is subject to biased interpretation depending on whether the information is consistent with the prior beliefs held by those who receive the information. Integrating the theory of motivated reasoning with the literature on performance information, the authors hypothesize that performance information that is inconsistent with prior beliefs is less likely to be interpreted correctly than belief-consistent information. Using randomized survey experiments in which respondents were presented with quantitative performance data, the authors show that subjects systematically interpret performance information in ways that conform with their prior beliefs. The findings question the assumption that providing performance information automatically increases knowledge about government performance, let alone improves political decisions.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Management Science and Operations Research, Public Administration

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/54360f87c2955716597fec33bce55b7aca8ecdb0

Citations in the corpus

• The Role of Evidence in Politics: Motivated Reasoning and Persuasion among Politicians (2017, unknown): “44 See, e.g., Baekgaard and Serritzlew 2016; Kahan et al. 2013; Lodge and Taber 2013; Taber, Cann, and Kucsova 2009; Taber and Lodge 2006.”