ArticleMedical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making2022
COVID-19 and Politically Motivated Reasoning.
Article in Medical decision making : an international journal of the Society for Medical Decision Making, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Drivers of health polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review.Science advances · 2025Pooled it
- Ideologically biased evaluation of evidence - A signal-detection approach to measure individual differences.PloS one · 2026Article
- No association between numerical ability and politically motivated reasoning in a large US probability sample.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the world witnessed a partisan segregation of beliefs toward the global health crisis and its management. Politically motivated reasoning, the tendency to interpret information in accordance with individual motives to protect valued beliefs rather than objectively considering the facts, could represent a key process involved in the polarization of attitudes. The objective of this study was to explore politically motivated reasoning when participants assess information regarding COVID-19.
designWe carried out a preregistered online experiment using a diverse sample (
resultsAt odds with our prestated hypothesis, we found no evidence in line with politically motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about COVID-19. Moreover, we found no evidence supporting the idea that numeric ability or cognitive sophistication bolster politically motivated reasoning in the case of COVID-19. Instead, our findings suggest that participants base their assessment on prior beliefs of the matter.
conclusionsOur findings suggest that politically polarized attitudes toward COVID-19 are more likely to be driven by lack of reasoning than politically motivated reasoning-a finding that opens potential avenues for combating political polarization about important health care topics. HIGHLIGHTS: Participants assessed numerical information regarding the effect of different COVID-19 policies.We found no evidence in line with politically motivated reasoning when interpreting numerical information about COVID-19.Participants tend to base their assessment of COVID-19-related facts on prior beliefs of the matter.Politically polarized attitudes toward COVID-19 are more a result of lack of thinking than partisanship.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.