Stephan Sommer (Bochum University of Applied Sciences and RWI): "Climate Change and the Covid-19 Pandemic: Testing for Motivated Reasoning".

Abstract:

Motivated reasoning can lead to societal divide over the severity of global challenges and, thus, to policies that are less stringent than necessary, such as low carbon prices. Using an experimental design implemented in a large-scale survey in Germany in 2022, we find that respondents are more likely to find news articles about global challenges credible if they confirm rather than contradict their prior beliefs. This tendency is stronger for the psychologically closer event of the Covid-19 pandemic than for the seemingly more distant event of climate change. In addition, our results suggest that polarization with respect to both challenges is lower among individuals who are less likely to pursue the goal of maintaining their beliefs. However, encouraging people to process information accurately and independently of their beliefs does not reduce the tendency to perceive only confirmatory information as credible.