Cognitive Styles, Media Preferences, and Attitudinal Polarization

• In Event: The Role of Emotions in Politics

Abstract

Social media are frequently called into question for favoring the connection between populist and illiberal leaders and their audience, as well as for spreading fake and extreme news. Indeed, media fragmentation has long been recognized as a feature facilitating the filtering of political news, thus potentially leading to echo chambers that foster information gap and attitude polarization in the electorates. However, little is known about the cognitive profile of the voters that are willing to enter, and to remain, within an echo chamber for gathering political information. The goal of this paper is to shed new light on the determinants of media preferences, as well as on their consequences for public opinion formation. Thus, we investigate a set of hypotheses linking the individual cognitive mindset—specifically the need for cognition and for cognitive closure—to the variety of news sources that are accessed and, in turn, to the likelihood of attitude reinforcement or transformation. To this end, we design and administer a smartphone application to gather individual behavioral data on a daily basis. This way, we can trace the media diet of a representative sample of Italian voters during the campaign for the 2019 European Parliament elections. Italy has the first populist government of Western Europe and populist parties currently attract 60 per cent of vote intentions. Items tapping the voters’ cognitive profile, as well as a survey experiment assigning pro- or counter-attitudinal information, are also included to clarify the causal role of voters’ cognitive mindset, media consumption patterns, and changes in political attitudes. Our results, discussed in the context of recent contributions on motivated social cognition, can contribute to explain the cognitive roots of populist mobilization and attitudinal polarization.

Authors

• Andrea De Angelis, University of Lucerne

• Alexander H. Trechsel, University of Lucerne

• Diego Garzia, European University Institute