Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-18T02:56:05.578Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A tale of two peoples: motivated reasoning in the aftermath of the Brexit Vote

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2020

Miriam Sorace Open the ORCID record for Miriam Sorace [Opens in a new window]  and
Sara Binzer Hobolt Open the ORCID record for Sara Binzer Hobolt [Opens in a new window]
Miriam Sorace*
Affiliation:
School of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
Sara Binzer Hobolt
Affiliation:
European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
*
*Corresponding author. Email: m.sorace@kent.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Partisanship is a powerful driver of economic perceptions. Yet we know less about whether other political divisions may lead to similar evaluative biases. In this paper, we explore how the salient divide between “Remainers” and “Leavers” in the UK in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum has given rise to biased economic perceptions. In line with the cognitive dissonance framework, we argue that salient non-partisan divisions can change economic perceptions by triggering processes of self- and in-group justification. Using both nationally-representative observational and experimental survey data, we demonstrate that the perceptions of the economy are shaped by the Brexit divide and that these biases are exacerbated when respondents are reminded of Brexit. These findings indicate that perceptual biases are not always rooted in partisanship, but can be triggered by other political divisions.

Keywords

Perceptual biaseconomic perceptionsaccountabilityreferendumsBrexit
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 4 , October 2021 , pp. 675 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, AI and Saunders, KL (1998) Ideological realignment in the US electorate. The Journal of Politics 60(3), 634–652.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, C, Blais, A, Bowler, S, Donovan, T and Listhaug, O (2005) Loser's Consent. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barber, M and Pope, JC (2019) Does party trump ideology? Disentangling party and ideology in America. American Political Science Review 113(1), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartels, LM (2002) Beyond the running tally: partisan bias in political perceptions. Political behavior 24(2), 117–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bisgaard, M (2015) Bias will find a way: economic perceptions, attributions of blame, and partisan-motivated reasoning during crisis. The Journal of Politics 77(3), 849–860.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosch, A (2016) Types of economic voting in regional elections: the 2012 Catalan election as a motivating case. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 26(1), 115–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullock, JG (2007) Experiments on partisanship and public opinion: party cues, false beliefs, and Bayesian updating.Google Scholar
Bullock, JG (2011) Elite influence on public opinion in an informed electorate. American Political Science Review 105(3), 496–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, A, Converse, PE, Miller, WE and Stokes, D (1960) The American Voter. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Conover, PJ and Feldman, S (1981) The origins and meaning of liberal/conservative self-identifications. American Journal of Political Science 617–645.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cooper, J (2007) Cognitive Dissonance Fifty Years of a Classic Theory. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Curtice, J (2017) Why leave won the UK's EU referendum. Journal of Common Market Studies 55, 19–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curtice, J (2018) The emotional legacy of Brexit: how Britain has become a country of ‘remainers and leavers’. Technical report, The UK in a Changing Europe – King's College London.Google Scholar
De Boef, S and Kellstedt, PM (2004) The political (and economic) origins of consumer confidence. American Journal of Political Science 48(4), 633–649.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Vries, CE, Hobolt, SB and Tilley, J (2018) Facing up to the facts: what causes economic perceptions?. Electoral Studies 51, 115–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donovan, K, Kellstedt, PM, Key, EM and Lebo, MJ (2019) Motivated reasoning, public opinion, and presidential approval. Political Behavior 42, 1–21.Google Scholar
Enns, PK, Kellstedt, PM and McAvoy, GE (2012) The consequences of partisanship in economic perceptions. Public Opinion Quarterly 76(2), 287–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Andersen, R (2006) The political conditioning of economic perceptions. The Journal of Politics 68(1), 194–207.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Menon, A (2017) Brexit and British Politics. Cambridge: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Evans, G and Pickup, M (2010) Reversing the causal arrow: the political conditioning of economic perceptions in the 2000–2004 U.S. Presidential Election Cycle. The Journal of Politics 72(4), 1236–1251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, G and Schaffner, F (2019) Brexit identity vs party identity. Technical report, the UK in a changing Europe – King's College London.Google Scholar
Festinger, L (1957) A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row & Peterson.Google Scholar
Fieldhouse, JE, Green, G, Evans, H, Schmitt, C, van der Eijk, J, Mellon, J and Prosser, C (2018) British Election Study Internet Panel Waves 1–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, MP (1978) Economic retrospective voting in American national elections: a micro-analysis. American Journal of Political Science 22, 426–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, MP (1981) Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Flynn, DJ, Nyhan, B and Reifler, J (2017) The nature and origins of misperceptions: understanding false and unsupported beliefs about politics. Political Psychology 38(S1), 127–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn, U and Harris, JL (2014) What does it mean to be biased: motivated reasoning and rationality. Psychology of Learning and Motivation 61, 41–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hix, S (2008) What's Wrong with the EU and How to Fix it. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hobolt, SB (2016) The Brexit vote: a divided nation, a divided continent. Journal of European Public Policy 23(9), 1259–1277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB (2018) Brexit and the 2017 UK general election. Journal of Common Market Studies 56, 39–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hobolt, SB, Leeper, T and Tilley, J (2020) Divided by the vote: affective polarization in the wake of Brexit. British Journal of Political Science.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Key, VO (1966) The Responsible Electorate. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiewiet, DR and Rivers, D (1984) A retrospective on retrospective voting. Political behavior 6(4), 369–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, DR and Kiewiet, DR (1979) Economic discontent and political behavior: the role of personal grievances and collective economic judgments in congressional voting. American Journal of Political Science 23, 495–527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kinder, DR and Kiewiet, DR (1981) Sociotropic politics: the American case. British Journal of Political Science 11(2), 129–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kramer, GH (1971) Short-term fluctuations in US voting behavior, 1896–1964. American Political Science Review 65(1), 131–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklinski, JH, Quirk, PJ, Jerit, J, Schwieder, D and Rich, RF (2000) Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship. Journal of Politics 62(3), 790–816.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kunda, Z (1990) The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 108(3), 480.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lauderdale, BE (2016) Partisan disagreements arising from rationalization of common information. Political Science Research and Methods 4(3), 477–492.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leeper, T and Slothuus, R (2014) Political parties, motivated reasoning, and public opinion formation. Political Psychology 35, 129–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis-Beck, MS and Stegmaier, M (2000) Economic determinants of electoral outcomes. Annual Review of Political Science 3(1), 183–219.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lodge, M, Taber, C and Weber, C (2006) First steps toward a dual-process accessibility model of political beliefs, attitudes, and behavior. In Redlawsk, DP (ed). Feeling Politics. New York: Palgrave, pp. 11–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martí, D and Cetrà, D (2016) The 2015 Catalan election: a de facto referendum on independence?. Regional & Federal Studies 26(1), 107–119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muñoz, J and Tormos, R (2015) Economic expectations and support for secession in Catalonia: between causality and rationalization. European Political Science Review 7(2), 315–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nyhan, B and Reifler, J (2010) When corrections fail: the persistence of political misperceptions. Political Behavior 32(2), 303–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redlawsk, DP (2002) Hot cognition or cool consideration? Testing the effects of motivated reasoning on political decision making. The Journal of Politics 64(4), 1021–1044.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Redlawsk, DP (2006) Feeling Politics: Emotion in Political Information Processing. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richards, L, Heath, A and Carl, N (2018) Red lines and compromises: mapping underlying complexities of Brexit preferences. The Political Quarterly 89(2), 280–290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serrano, I (2019) Ethnic alignment in divided regions: individual and contextual factors. Territory, Politics, Governance 8(4), 1–21.Google Scholar
Setälä, M (1999) Referendums and Democratic Government. Normative Theory and the Analysis of Institutions. Houndmills Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Tilley, J and Hobolt, SB (2011) Is the government to blame? An experimental test of how partisanship shapes perceptions of performance and responsibility. The Journal of Politics 73(2), 316–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tilley, J, Neundorf, A and Hobolt, SB (2018) When the pound in people's pocket matters: how changes to personal financial circumstances affect party choice. The Journal of Politics 80(2), 555–569.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verbeek, M and Nijman, T (1992) Testing for selectivity bias in panel data models. International Economic Review 33(3), 681–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wlezien, C, Franklin, M and Twiggs, D (1997) Economic perceptions and vote choice: disentangling the endogeneity. Political Behavior 19(1), 7–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
YouGov, (2019) YouGov Top Issue Tracker.Google Scholar
Zaller, JR (1992) The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Sorace and Hobolt Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QQM5MC
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Sorace and Hobolt supplementary material

Appendix

Download Sorace and Hobolt supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 394.9 KB