Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Jerit, Jennifer
• Davies, Caitlin
• Lavine, Howard
• Taber, Charles S.

Titel

The Paradox of Political Knowledge 1

Ist Teil von

• The Feeling, Thinking Citizen, 2018, p.65-80

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Political knowledge is viewed by many scholars as a foundation of representative democracy. People who know more about the political world engage in a variety of normatively desirable behaviors: they are more likely to vote, be tolerant of others, and have logically organized issue attitudes, among other things. Yet, the theory of motivated reasoning poses several challenges to this understanding. Indeed, one of the most striking results from this research program is that people with the highest levels of political knowledge are the most susceptible to bias. Given the general tendency of people to seek out confirming information and/or refute information that challenges their preexisting opinions, seemingly objective facts have a contested status in theories of motivated reasoning. In contrast to the view of knowledge as the “currency of citizenship,” Lodge’s work raises the question of whether a factually informed citizenry is desirable, let alone possible. In this chapter, the authors outline the conventional view of political knowledge as a prerequisite to citizen competence. They show that research of political sophistication is among the most important political resources a person can have, especially when it comes to how people reason about politics. A way to reconcile the paradox of political sophistication relates to the nature of the information environment. The authors also outline how Milton Lodge's work challenges the conventional wisdom, resulting in what we call the "paradox of political knowledge". They focus on Lodge's distinctive mechanisms—i. e., the chain of mental events that occur in the decision-making process—forced researchers to confront important questions about the normative status of political knowledge. The authors attempt to reconcile the diverging perspectives. One of the lasting contributions of Lodge's career is the research that has been stimulated by the troubling implications of his work on political cognition.