Visit to La Trobe Social Psych Research Group

Lab members Dr Anna Klas and Dr Eddie Clarke gave an invited presentation to La Trobe’s Social Psych group on Friday the 31st of August, 2018

Their joint presentation focused on presenting preliminary work conducted by the Misinformation Lab regarding the influence of politically motivated reasoning across domains. Anna and Eddie are happy to report that their presentation was warmly received, with plans in place for Dr Mathew Marques to present at the Misinformation Lab in the coming months.

Abstract of the presentation is provided below

Politically-Motivated Reasoning: Partisanship and Ideological Effects on Social Issues

Edward Clarke & Anna Klas

Politics, both at the elite level and at the level of the voter, appears to be in a stage of hyperpartisanship. Individuals will discount information that is inconsistent with their prior ideological beliefs or political grouping, or over-attend to politically-congruent information. This politically-motivated reasoning appears to exist across a range of social issues, including science issues such as climate change, and possibly in responses to sexual misconduct allegations against politicians. As such, we present preliminary work conducted within the Misinformation Lab at Deakin University examining these potential effects. We will first present work conducted via MTurk (US; N = 231) that explores whether partisanship affects perceived legitimacy of sexual misconduct allegations against Republican and Democrat politicians. We will then present work conducted with US (N = 400) and UK (N = 402) samples examining the impact pro-climate change messages have on pro-climate change behaviour across the political spectrum.