Article summary
Many Americans consume ideologically aligned news, prompting proposals to encourage exposure to opposing outlets as a way to reduce polarization. Motivated reasoning theory, however, warns that confronting people with uncongenial information can backfire and deepen division. Drawing on the idea that sustained exposure to novel information can overcome motivated reasoning—and that partisan outlets on opposite sides often report different facts—this study tests whether regular consumers of one partisan source will learn and moderate when repeatedly exposed to the opposing outlet.