Does Counter-Attitudinal Information Cause Backlash? Results from Three Large Survey Experiments

Andrew Guess and Alexander Coppock

British Journal of Political Science, 2020, vol. 50, issue 4, 1497-1515

Abstract: Several theoretical perspectives suggest that when individuals are exposed to counter-attitudinal evidence or arguments, their pre-existing opinions and beliefs are reinforced, resulting in a phenomenon sometimes known as ‘backlash’. This article formalizes the concept of backlash and specifies how it can be measured. It then presents the results from three survey experiments – two on Mechanical Turk and one on a nationally representative sample – that find no evidence of backlash, even under theoretically favorable conditions. While a casual reading of the literature on information processing suggests that backlash is rampant, these results indicate that it is much rarer than commonly supposed.

Date: 2020
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