Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages
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2014
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| Online Access: | http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1400581789 |
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ndltd-OhioLink-oai-etd.ohiolink.edu-osu14005817892021-08-03T06:25:03Z Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages Weeks, Brian Edward Communication Political Science political communication misinformation misperceptions false beliefs fact-checking emotions motivated reasoning Political misperceptions are a complex problem for scholars, journalists, and politicians. Despite ubiquitous fact-checking and corrective messages online and in the media, polls show citizens are consistently misinformed about a variety of political issues. To date, most explanations for the failure of these messages to correct false beliefs have centered only on partisan-based information processing strategies, which suggest citizens are more likely to believe a claim that reflects well on their preferred party while rejecting those that reflect poorly. However, I argue there are several reasons to suspect this approach by itself is insufficient for explaining and predicting why and how fact-checking messages often fail. In this dissertation I build on affective intelligence theory and propose a theoretical model that outlines how citizens’ unique emotional states interact with their party affiliation to influence belief in political misperceptions. I argue the experience of two discrete emotions of the same valence, anxiety and anger, can have dramatically different effects on citizens’ beliefs about politics by determining whether they consider misinformation in either a partisan or more deliberative fashion. The unique influence of anxiety and anger is tested in two experimental studies that manipulate emotional states and show how these discrete emotions come to have contrasting effects on people’s beliefs about contemporary political issues. Study 1 tests whether emotions unrelated to the target of the misperception can influence belief, while Study 2 examines if emotions stemming directly from the issue of interest affect beliefs. These studies provide evidence that anger facilitates partisan, motivated processing of inaccurate political claims, which results in beliefs that are consistent with prior attitudes. Anxiety contributes to more deliberative consideration of the content of the claims and less reliance on partisanship, which results in beliefs based more on the nature of the evidence at hand. The results of the study suggest that much of the difficulty in fact-checking previously attributed to partisan motivated reasoning may be a result of the discrete emotion anger, specifically. Based on these findings I argue that studies of political misinformation should examine the interactions between citizens’ discrete emotional states, their partisanship, and the nature of the message in order to better understand the underlying theoretical mechanism driving false beliefs 2014-11-14 English text The Ohio State University / OhioLINK http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1400581789 http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1400581789 unrestricted This thesis or dissertation is protected by copyright: all rights reserved. It may not be copied or redistributed beyond the terms of applicable copyright laws. |
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NDLTD |
| language |
English |
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NDLTD |
| topic |
Communication Political Science political communication misinformation misperceptions false beliefs fact-checking emotions motivated reasoning |
| spellingShingle |
Communication Political Science political communication misinformation misperceptions false beliefs fact-checking emotions motivated reasoning Weeks, Brian Edward Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| author |
Weeks, Brian Edward |
| author_facet |
Weeks, Brian Edward |
| author_sort |
Weeks, Brian Edward |
| title |
Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| title_short |
Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| title_full |
Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| title_fullStr |
Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Feeling is Believing? How emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| title_sort |
feeling is believing? how emotions influence the effectiveness of political fact-checking messages |
| publisher |
The Ohio State University / OhioLINK |
| publishDate |
2014 |
| url |
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1400581789 |
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