Researchers argue that politicians systematically discount opinions from constituents with whom they disagree—a phenomenon termed 'disagreement discounting.' This behavior is a key contributor to ideological incongruence.
Survey Experiments on Politicians' Biases:
* Two survey experiments featuring state and local politicians demonstrate this bias.
* These experiments showed that public officials assume constituents with opposing views are less informed about the issue, leading them to discount those opinions.
* This finding holds true for both established partisan issues (like party platform differences) and nonpartisan ones.
* Addressing Alternative Explanations:
* The results cannot be attributed to politicians favoring copartisans' opinions or focusing on likely voters.
The Role of Policy Position Explanation:
* A third survey experiment reveals that the activity central to representative governance—explicitly taking and explaining policy positions—exacerbates this bias among elected officials.
* This suggests that representing constituents may inadvertently foster a tendency to disregard their own political opponents' views.
Implications for Political Representation:
* These findings highlight potential challenges in democratic representation, showing how the very act of being an official can lead to biased information processing.
| How Politicians Discount the Opinions of Constituents With Whom They Disagree was authored by Daniel Butler and Adam Dynes. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2016. |
