Citizens’ motivated reasoning about public performance: experimental findings from the US and Denmark

Recent studies find motivated reasoning in citizens’ processing of information about public performance. Using experiments in the US and Denmark, we examine effects on an accuracy-based task of two forms of motivated reasoning: partisan identity-based reasoning and reasoning from ideology-based governance preferences (favoring either the public or the private sector). The experiments incorporate a political prime, a health care needs prime (to reduce politicization), and a neutral, no-prime, condition. We find that priming citizens to think politically accentuates the influence of partisan identities and governance preferences on reasoning. In contrast, priming about the need for a service reduces these biases. These findings extend knowledge of motivated reasoning in an accuracy-based task and priming with a no-prime benchmark, and confirm some findings of previous studies. Reducing the salience of partisan identities or governance preferences in the presentation of information may help stimulate more accuracy-based reasoning about public performance.