Reflective political reasoning: political disagreement and empathy

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• dc.contributor.author Muradova, Lala
• dc.contributor.author Arceneaux, Kevin
• dc.date.accessioned 2023-05-15T06:43:04Z
• dc.date.available 2023-05-15T06:43:04Z
• dc.date.issued 2022
• dc.description.abstract As political polarization increases across many of the world's established democracies, many citizens are unwilling to appreciate and consider the viewpoints of those who disagree with them. Previous research shows that this lack of reflection can undermine democratic accountability. The purpose of this paper is to study whether empathy for the other can motivate people to reason reflectively about politics. Extant studies have largely studied trait-level differences in the ability and inclination of individuals to engage in reflection. Most of these studies focus on observational moderators, which makes it difficult to make strong claims about the effects of being in a reflective state on political decision making. We extend this research by using a survey experiment with a large and heterogeneous sample of UK citizens (N = 2014) to investigate whether a simple empathy intervention can induce people to consider opposing viewpoints and incorporate those views in their opinion about a pressing political issue. We find that actively imagining the feelings and thoughts of someone one disagrees with prompts more reflection in the way that people reason about political issues as well as elicits empathic feelings of concern towards those with opposing viewpoints. We further examine whether empathy facilitates openness to attitude change in the counter-attitudinal direction and find that exposure to an opposing perspective (without its empathy component) per se is enough to prompt attitude change. Our study paints a more nuanced picture of the relationship between empathy, reflection and policy attitudes.
• dc.description.sponsorship The project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement n° 759736). This publication reflects the authors’ views and that the Agency is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. Lala Muradova also wants to acknowledge Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO, Belgium) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 959234.
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Muradova L, Arceneaux K. Reflective political reasoning: political disagreement and empathy. Eur J Polit Res. 2022;61(3):740-61. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12490
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1475-6765.12490
• dc.identifier.issn 0304-4130
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/56810
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Wiley
• dc.relation.ispartof European Journal of Political Research. 2022;61(3):740-61.
• dc.relation.isreferencedby https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/QYMM1Z
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/759736
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/959234
• dc.rights © 2021 The Authors. European Journal of Political Research published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of European Consortium for Political Research. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword polarization
• dc.subject.keyword reflection
• dc.subject.keyword political reasoning
• dc.subject.keyword empathy
• dc.subject.keyword deliberation
• dc.subject.keyword attitude change
• dc.subject.keyword cognitive complexity
• dc.title Reflective political reasoning: political disagreement and empathy
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion