Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Rigid Religious Faith Promotes Selective Exposure to Attitude-Congruent Political Information

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Political Behavior Aims and scope Submit manuscript

A Correction to this article was published on 12 November 2020

This article has been updated

Abstract

When seeking political information, people are motivated to selectively seek information that is congruent with their prior attitudes. However, some individuals may do so more than others, and not much is known about what factors affect such individual differences. Rigid religious faith is one variable that may promote selective exposure. Messages of the importance of rigid faith—the idea that religious beliefs must be held firmly and not doubted—could encourage a habit of selective exposure to information that supports existing religious beliefs. As a side effect, this habit of selective exposure might be applied outside the context of religion. In this study, an information-search task on a non-religious political issue is used to demonstrate that subjects prefer to read a greater number of arguments that are congruent with their prior attitudes on the issue, and this effect of prior attitudes on information-search behavior is found to be stronger among individuals who have rigid religious convictions. A scrambled-sentence task is used to prime half the subjects with religious concepts prior to completing the information-search task. This experiment demonstrates that increased salience of religious faith causes an increase in selective exposure to attitude-congruent political information.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Change history

Notes

  1. Examination of scatterplots (which can be found in the online appendix) does not suggest any strong non-linear trends in the data, so the analyses in this paper are conducted using linear models.

  2. Adding only NFC to the model without adding CRT (alternate model not shown in table) reduces the estimated interactive effect of rigid religious conviction to 0.045. Adding only CRT without NFC reduces the effect to 0.037.

  3. Estimating this same model while excluding participants who have very low scores for rigid religious conviction (such as those who have a score of zero or those who have a score lower than some other arbitrary low threshold) produces similar results and only makes the effects appear slightly stronger than those reported here.

References

  • Ahmed, A. M., & Salas, O. (2011). Implicit influences of christian religious representations on dictator and prisoner’s dilemma game decisions. The Journal of Socio-Economics, 40(3), 242–246.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113–133.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2004). Research: A revised religious fundamentalism scale: The short and sweet of it. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14(1), 47–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arceneaux, K., & Vander Wielen, R. J. (2017). Taming intuition: How reflection minimizes partisan reasoning and promotes democratic accountability. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bargh, J. A., Chen, M., & Burrows, L. (1996). Automaticity of social behavior: Direct effects of trait construct and stereotype activation on action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(2), 230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Batson, C. D. (1976). Religion as prosocial: Agent or double agent? Journal for the Scientific study of Religion, 15, 29–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Batson, C. D., & Raynor-Prince, L. (1983). Religious orientation and complexity of thought about existential concerns. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 22, 38–50.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Berinsky, A. J., Huber, G. A., & Lenz, G. S. (2012). Evaluating online labor markets for experimental research: Amazon. com’s mechanical turk. Political Analysis, 20(3), 351–368.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Brady, H. E., Verba, S., & Schlozman, K. L. (1995). Beyond ses: A resource model of political participation. American Political Science Review, 89(2), 271–294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, P. G., Appleby, J., Borgida, E., Callaghan, T. H., Ekstrom, P., Farhart, C. E., et al. (2014). The minnesota multi-investigator 2012 presidential election panel study. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 14(1), 78–104.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, S., Jewell, R. M., & Waggoner, P. D. (2015). Are samples drawn from mechanical turk valid for research on political ideology? Research Politics, 2(4), 2053168015622072.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duriez, B., Fontaine, J. R., & Hutsebaut, D. (2000). A further elaboration of the post-critical belief scale: Evidence for the existence of four different approaches to religion in flanders-belgium. Psychologica Belgica, 40(3), 153–182.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive reflection and decision making. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Garrett, R. K. (2009). Echo chambers online?: Politically motivated selective exposure among internet news users. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(2), 265–285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science, 336(6080), 493–496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, B. (2015). God has given you everything you need to strengthen your faith. Retrieved 23 August, 2020 from https://billygraham.org/answer/god-has-given-you-everything-you-need-to-strengthen-your-faith/.

  • Hardin, R. (1997). The economics of religious belief. Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE)/Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, 153, 259–278.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hart, W., Albarracín, D., Eagly, A. H., Brechan, I., Lindberg, M. J., & Merrill, L. (2009). Feeling validated versus being correct: A meta-analysis of selective exposure to information. Psychological Bulletin, 135(4), 555.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009). Red media, blue media: Evidence of ideological selectivity in media use. Journal of Communication, 59(1), 19–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • James, W. (1896). The will to believe: And other essays in popular philosophy. Harlow: Longmans, Green, and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jang, S. M. (2014). Seeking congruency or incongruency online? Examining selective exposure to four controversial science issues. Science Communication, 36(2), 143–167.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, T. J., Bichard, S. L., & Zhang, W. (2009). Communication communities or “cyberghettos?”: A path analysis model examining factors that explain selective exposure to blogs. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15(1), 60–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knobloch-Westerwick, S., & Meng, J. (2009). Looking the other way: Selective exposure to attitude-consistent and counterattitudinal political information. Communication Research, 36(3), 426–448.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kruglanski, A. W., & Boyatzi, L. M. (2012). The psychology of closed and open mindedness, rationality, and democracy. Critical Review, 24(2), 217–232.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kruglanski, A. W., Webster, D. M., & Klem, A. (1993). Motivated resistance and openness to persuasion in the presence or absence of prior information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 861–861.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lelkes, Y., Sood, G., & Iyengar, S. (2017). The hostile audience: The effect of access to broadband internet on partisan affect. American Journal of Political Science, 61(1), 5–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, A. R., Djupe, P. A., Mockabee, S. T., & Su-Ya Wu, J. (2015). The (non) religion of mechanical turk workers. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 54(2), 419–428.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McFarland, S. G., & Warren, J. C, Jr. (1992). Religious orientations and selective exposure among fundamentalist christians. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31, 163–174.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mullinix, K. J., Leeper, T. J., Druckman, J. N., & Freese, J. (2015). The generalizability of survey experiments. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 2(2), 109–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • New Era, T. (1973). What would you do?. Retrieved August 23, 2020 from https://www.lds.org/new-era/1973/05/what-would-you-do.

  • New Era, T. (2007). Questions and answers. Retrieved August 23, 2020 from https://www.lds.org/new-era/2007/07/q-and-a-questions-and-answers.

  • Osteen, V. (2016). Increasing faith. Retrieved October 6, 2020 from https://www.joelosteen.com/en-US/inspiration/blogs/2017/11/27/23/12/Increasing%20Faith.

  • Parker, K., Horowitz, J., Igielnik, R., Oliphant, B., & Brown, A. (2017). America’s complex relationship with guns: an in-depth look at the attitudes and experiences of US adults. Washington DC: Pew Research Center.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prior, M. (2013). Media and political polarization. Annual Review of Political Science, 16, 101–127.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Randolph-Seng, B., & Nielsen, M. E. (2007). Honesty: One effect of primed religious representations. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 17(4), 303–315.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saroglou, V. (2002). Beyond dogmatism: The need for closure as related to religion. Mental Health Religion Culture, 5(2), 183–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shariff, A. F., & Norenzayan, A. (2007). God is watching you: Priming god concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychological Science, 18(9), 803–809.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shenhav, A., Rand, D. G., & Greene, J. D. (2012). Divine intuition: Cognitive style influences belief in god. Journal of Experimental Psychology General, 141(3), 423.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. (1979). The role of category accessibility in the interpretation of information about persons: Some determinants and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(10), 1660.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stroud, N. J. (2008). Media use and political predispositions: Revisiting the concept of selective exposure. Political Behavior, 30(3), 341–366.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated skepticism in the evaluation of political beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755–769.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Toplak, M. E., West, R. F., & Stanovich, K. E. (2011). The cognitive reflection test as a predictor of performance on heuristics-and-biases tasks. Memory Cognition, 39(7), 1275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(6), 1049.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Westerwick, A., Kleinman, S. B., & Knobloch-Westerwick, S. (2013). Turn a blind eye if you care: Impacts of attitude consistency, importance, and credibility on seeking of political information and implications for attitudes. Journal of Communication, 63(3), 432–453.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

John Barry Ryan, Milton Lodge, Stanley Feldman, Paul Djupe, Randy Cragun, Hyun A Kim, Stephen Ceccoli, Joanne Miller, Ryan Cragun, Ryan Claasen.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, USA

    James Cragun

Authors
  1. James Cragun
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to James Cragun.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

The original online version of this article was revised: Table 3 footnote was added.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Electronic supplementary material 1 (DOCX 14 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Cragun, J. Rigid Religious Faith Promotes Selective Exposure to Attitude-Congruent Political Information. Polit Behav 44, 1175–1201 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-020-09650-1

Download citation

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-020-09650-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation