Thinking about politics with your preconceptions

Jonah Lehrer has three related postings over the past three days on his The Frontal Cortex blog discussing recent research results on how people interpret information on political candidates:

• Why the Facts Don't Matter in Politics (Sept. 15)
• Cognitive Dissonance and Politics (Sept. 16)
• Motivated Reasoning (Sept. 17)

The first of these cited a "backfire effect" suggesting that people may be more likely to believe a false report when they are provided information demonstrating that it is false. Lehrer includes this quotation:

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, con

In the later postings Lehrer demonstrates what I assume is liberal guilt, suggesting that Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty of the backfire effect.

I think the clear point in the research is that we are all using "motivated reasoning" and what we learn is a function of what we believe. One result which I would underline is that in one study Lehrer cites, the ten percent best informed people seemed less subject to hearing only things that reinforce their original positions.

Still, I don't find anything in the latter two postings to refute Nyhan's and Reifler's idea that Republicans may be (even) more subject to backfire effects than Democrats. Of course, that is damning Democrats with the faintest of praise!

Red is counties that went for Bush. Blue for Kerry

It seems to me that it is fairly clear that the best newspapers in the country are in blue counties -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune. The big cities are Democratic, and their citizens have more and better news media. Do they learn more about the candidates?