Motivated reasoning and public opinion

Citizens, especially those who are knowledgeable and care the most about politics, are motivated to defend their beliefs and attitudes in the face of discrepant information. These motivated biases strongly influence the way people think about health care policies and the politicians and parties that propose or attack these contentious policies. Three cognitive mechanisms are identified: a prior belief effect, confirmation bias, and disconfirmation bias. Together, these information processes conspire to produce persistence and polarization of opinion on health care policies.     

Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs

We propose a model of motivated skepticism that helps explain when and why citizens are biased-information processors. Two experimental studies explore how citizens evaluate arguments about affirmative action and gun control, finding strong evidence of a prior attitude effect such that attitudinally congruent arguments are evaluated as stronger than attitudinally incongruent arguments. When reading pro and con arguments, participants (Ps) counterargue the contrary arguments and uncritically accept supporting arguments, evidence of a disconfirmation bias . We also find a confirmation bias —the seeking out of confirmatory evidence—when Ps are free to self-select the source of the arguments they read. Both the confirmation and disconfirmation biases lead to attitude polarization —the strengthening of t₂ over t₁ attitudes—especially among those with the strongest priors and highest levels of political sophistication. We conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings for rational behavior in a democracy.     

The Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism: Old Wine in New Bottlenecks

This article examines the Gaza Reconstruction Mechanism (GRM) – the main institutional mechanism regulating the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip since the 2014 war. Proponents of the GRM hold that it is a crucial lifeline enabling the entry of humanitarian and reconstruction goods into Gaza while assuaging Israel’s security concerns. In contrast, this article argues that the GRM has introduced a bureaucratic and cumbersome mechanism that has created new bottlenecks that are impeding effective reconstruction and have institutionalized and depoliticized the siege of the Gaza Strip by passing the responsibility for its maintenance on to the international community.     

Speak ill of me … but speak,or How to be Afrikaans on the SABC

Abstract

The elections of 1994 marked the beginning of a full-scale restructuring of the broadcasting sector in South Africa. Apart from changes related to ownership, editorial content, the media's position within society at large and its relationship to the government of the day, South African media have also undergone massive changes in terms of their languages of communication and the faces that are seen and heard. These changes were steered, in part, by debates on language equity and identity in South Africa. The politics of language equity in broadcasting reform has been shaped by conflicts over the legitimacy of who is represented, by what means, by whom and for what purposes. Afrikaans especially came under fire because of its privileged position before 1994. While the transition of South Africa to an inclusive democracy in 1994 freed Afrikaans from its apartheid shackles, it also made it one of only 11 official languages (Giliomee 2004: 25). The resultant debates about the position and status of Afrikaans – including that of speakers of Afrikaans – have intensified during the almost two decades post-apartheid. This article explores these discourses to establish the position of Afrikaans and its speakers as far as the South African Broadcasting Corporation is concerned.