The Politics of Motivation

The Politics of Motivation*

by
James N. Druckman
Northwestern University [e-mail] June 22, 2011

Abstract

Taber and Lodge (2006) offer a powerful case for the prevalence of directional reasoning that aims not at truth, but at the vindication of prior opinions. Taber and Lodge’s results have far-reaching implications for empirical scholarship and normative theory; indeed, the very citizens often seen as performing “best” on tests of political knowledge, sophistication, and ideological constraint appear to be the ones who are the most susceptible to directional reasoning. However Taber and Lodge’s study, while internally beyond reproach, may substantially overstate the presence of motivated reasoning in political settings. That said, the focus on accuracy motivation has the potential to bring together two models of opinion formation that many treat as competitors and to offer a bases for assessing citizen competence.

*I thank Jeff Friedman, Samara Klar, and Thomas Leeper for extremely helpful advice.
Criticizing citizens’ abilities to form coherent political preferences is a favorite pastime of scholars and pundits. Many focus on citizens’ lack of information or their inability to draw on coherent ideologies. In their article, “Motivated Skepticism in Political Beliefs” (2006), Taber and Lodge shift the focus to motivation. The question is not whether citizens possess sufficient information or hold information-organizing ideologies, but rather, whether they are sufficiently motivated to analyze new information in an evenhanded way. While Taber and Lodge exhibit appropriate caution in drawing normative conclusions, they are fairly resolved that most citizens lack the motivation to integrate new information in an unbiased fashion.

In this note, I suggest that under reasonable political conditions, citizens may be more fair-minded and engage in more accurate processing than they did in Taber and Lodge’s

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