What Motivates Reasoning? A Theory of Goal‐Dependent Political Evaluation

Rather than exhibiting bias or open‐minded reasoning at baseline, we argue that information processing is motivated by whatever goals a context makes salient. Thus, if politics feels like debate, people will be motivated to argue for their side. If politics feels like deliberation, they will be motivated to seek consensus through open‐minded processing. Results from three experiments demonstrate: (1) Politics evokes thoughts similar to conflictual contexts and dissimilar from deliberative contexts. (2) Consequently, information labeled “political” primes the motivation to counterargue, leading to opinion polarization. Absent such labeling, no such motivation is evident, explaining why bias is common but not inherent to politics. (3) Despite this capacity for bias, people can be motivated to actively process and accept counterattitudinal information by simply making the value of open‐mindedness salient. This suggests open‐minded discourse is possible even absent motivation to evaluate information accurately. We conclude by discussing the implications of our research for political discourse.     

No Right to Classified Public Whistleblowing

Given the crucial role unauthorized disclosures can play in uncovering grave government wrongdoing, it makes sense to search for a defense of justified cases of what I call “classified public whistleblowing.” The question that concerns me is what form such a defense should take. The main claim will be a negative one, namely, that a defense of whistleblowing cannot be based on individual rights, be they legal or moral, though this is indeed the most commonly proposed defense. In closing, I will outline a more appealing alternative, namely, a justification defense.     

“I believe that it will be an amazing experience”: pre-departure impressions of students on an Erasmus exchange programme

This article discusses responses to interviews forming the first part of a longitudinal study in which we seek to evaluate the short- and long-term impacts of the Erasmus experience on law students from a British university of the effects of a year spent abroad at a partner institution. Law is a particularly fruitful subject area for such a study, as students will be studying in a country with a different legal culture to that with which students are familiar. It is clear though that the experience is not limited to legal study but extends to working within a different educational culture, as well as living in another country over an extended period of time. The object of this paper is to explore and analyse actual expectations and experiences of students more fully so as to understand the impact of the Erasmus programme on their lives and careers. Whilst the data collected to date, mainly through in-depth semi-structured interviews, covers a limited population, the study identifies a wide-ranging set of motivational factors, though the mixture of, and weight given to, academic and personal motivations that vary from student to student.