"If a moral issue is tied to one’s political identity (e.g.,
pro-choice vs. pro-life) so that defensive motivations are at work (Chaiken,
Giner-Sorolla, & Chen, 1996) the initial preference may not be reversible
by any possible evidence or failure to find evidence. Try, for example, to make
the case for the position you oppose on abortion, eugenics, or the use of
torture against your nation’s enemies. In each case there are utilitarian
reasons available on both sides, but many people find it difficult or even
painful to state reasons on the other side. Motivated reasoning is ubiquitous
in the moral domain (for a review, see Ditto, Pizarro, Tannenbaum, 1009)."
(Haidt & Kesebir, 2009 pg. 15-16)
One reason that a moral belief associated with a social
identity is more resistant to change is that self-relevant information is
processed more extensively, but not more objectively (Baumeister 2010, p. 146).
Geoffrey L. Cohen's 2003 study demonstrates that identification with a group that supports a particular policy can have a greater influence on judgments of that policy than the policy itself. In this case, Cohen presented research participants that identified with the Democratic or with the Republican parties with a proposed welfare policy that was either less generous or more generous than any existing in the U.S. Then, in a series of manipulations, he indicated to Democratic research participants that Democrats supported either of the two policies and indicated to Republican research participants that Republicans supported either of the two policies. Of key interest, simply indicating that the leadership of the political party with which they identified supported the policy changed whether the participants themselves supported that policy, independently of the policy itself.
Participants described in Geoffrey Cohen’s “Party Over
Policy: The Dominating Impact of Group Influence on Political
Beliefs” changed their attitudes based not on the explicit content of a message
but instead on their beliefs about the source of a message. This is
not, in itself, unusual. What was somewhat more unusual is that
these participants were elaborating the message at the time. Elaboration, the
careful consideration of a message, is often measured by examining the number
of topic-relevant thoughts that an individual generates in response to a
message. These thoughts, it is presumed, reflect the participant’s attempt
to accurately interpret a message and form an objective opinion in response to the
message. This motivation to be objective is part of the motivation to
elaborate and, like elaboration, can be limited in numerous ways be ability.
In Cohen, the central question is not whether individuals
are motivated to elaborate. All of the participants elaborate,
although differences in elaboration may be obscured by the time limit imposed
on the thought listing or demand characteristics of writing an
editorial. However, participants may vary in their ability to be
objective. What are the potential sources of this variation in
ability and how can we distinguish them? Cohen suggests that information
about the source is incorporated into impressions of the message. He
defends this notion by detailing differences in the content and construal (not
the valence) of thought listing (and the editorial assignment).
What is not clear from Cohen’s account is how this
information becomes incorporated. There is one hint; individuals in
one experiment were more persuaded by a normally counter-attitudinal message
attributed to representatives of their party. This could suggest
that individuals were surprised by the position taken by their party and, in
response to this surprise, were motivated to justify this
position. Elaboration, here, may have occurred both for the message
itself and the source of the message. As soon as the policies were
apprehended (and one hopes that the participants could distinguish at least the
stringent policy as somewhat extreme) the message may have been elaborated in a
motivated way. Once the question of why the Democrats were
supporting the stringent policy or the Republicans supporting the generous
policy was answered, as objectively as information constraints and time
constraints allowed, then elaboration of personal response could
begin. It is not clear why this was not reflected in the thought
listing.
A potentially complementary, potentially conflicting
hypothesis is that from first reading knowing the source imposed a filter on
the message. This hypothesis is closer to Cohen’s
own. Here, participants selectively ignore information that would
seem counter-attitudinal for the source, constructing ad hoc justifications for
the position being taken using easily accessible knowledge about what the party
would believe. This is an effortful process but one that draws
selectively on heuristic cues.
Another hypothesis is that group members are defending the
position taken by other group members or group leaders. Here, they
support they are engaged in socially motivated reasoning and have given little
thought to objectivity in an impersonal sense. Indeed, as Cohen
suggests, group-based cognitive dissonance could be, at least in part, at
fault, depending on the centrality of the Democratic or Republican
identity.
