Is Resistance Futile?: citizen knowledge, motivated reasoning, and fact-checking

Abstract

While the term “knowledge resistance” historically has not been used in political science research, a number of different conceptualizations of the phenomena of resisting, denying, misusing, or misperceiving facts, and political realities have been key components in analyses of public opinion and electoral behavior for many decades. In this chapter, we begin with a brief account of how political science research has examined the nature and extent of the public's knowledge about political topics. Stemming from that, we review the cognitive biases that limit or prevent people from accepting available knowledge. We focus on motivated reasoning as the framework that has become central to the understanding of how people process political information. Next, we outline the findings of existing research around a potential solution for the problems associated with knowledge resistance: fact-checking. Finally, we describe the power and limitations of corrections according to existing research and lay out the implications of addressing knowledge resistance for democratic societies.

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ORCID for Jason Reifler: orcid.org/0000-0002-1116-7346

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