New Research on How Partisanship Affects Factual Beliefs About Politics

ISPS researchers are looking into partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics: Why is it that, in surveys, self-identified Democrats and Republicans vary in how much they agree with certain facts, such as President Obama’s place of birth?

The team – Profs. Bullock, Gerber, Huber, and Seth Hill from UC San Diego – find that, “partisan differences in survey responses may not solely indicate differences in true beliefs. Instead, they may also reflect the expressive value of offering survey responses that portray one’s party in a favorable light.”

Link to PDF of working paper here.