Social Psychology Commons^™

People Remember Liked Political Policies As Having Been Attributed To Their Own Party, Dalton Thomas Bailey

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

A robust finding in psychology shows that people tend to like information more when it supports their existing beliefs, or comes from their own ingroup, a finding known as motivated reasoning. These findings are especially prominent in a political context. Quite consistently, research suggests people increase their liking of political information like political policies when they are attributed to their own party. What is unknown, however, is if people also tend to attribute personally liked information to their own party. These studies were conducted to investigate this question.

Two, within-subjects studies were conducted. In both, participants (undergraduate students) saw various …