POL_S 428 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Cognitive Dissonance, Motivated Reasoning, Selective Perception
Document Summary
People will opposing viewpoints, when shown the same report, will each believe that the report is biased in favor of the other side in fact, the most informed on either extreme will ignore or rationalize discordant information. What is the media doing: strategic frame: focusing on why a politician says something instead of what they say, analysis of strategy and rationale behind rhetoric. Built on selective recall, selective perception and motivated reasoning. Founded on cognitive dissonance which argues that information at odds with existing beliefs is uncomfortable, so we seek information that accords with our beliefs and dismiss information that does not. Partisans should tend to remember more of the disconfirming portions of ta message than the parts that support their position. Vallone and his colleagues observed selective recall differing along partisan lines even on simple, objective criteria such as the number of references to a given subject.
