Motivated political reasoning: On the emergence of belief-value constellations

Kai Barron, Anna Becker and Steffen Huck

European Economic Review, 2025, vol. 172, issue C

Abstract: We study the relationship between moral values (“ought” statements) and factual beliefs (“is” statements). We show that thinking about values affects the beliefs people hold. This effect is mediated by prior political leanings, thereby contributing to the polarization of factual beliefs. We document these findings in a pre-registered online experiment with a nationally representative sample of over 1,800 individuals in the US. We also show that participants do not distort their beliefs in response to financial incentives to do so, suggesting that deep values exert a stronger motivational force than financial incentives.

Keywords: Motivated beliefs; Values; Polarization; Experiment; Reasoning (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C90 D72 D74 D83 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Working Paper: Motivated Political Reasoning: On the Emergence of Belief-Value Constellations (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:172:y:2025:i:c:s0014292124002587

DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2024.104929

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