Peter Beattie

How does the media affect what people believe about politics - and by extension, how the political system functions? I investigate the ecology of information, divided into two sides: demand (psychological) and supply (political-economic). Social evolution theory provides the organizing framework, which requires filling in from social, political, and evolutionary psychology; media and communication studies; political economy of media; and comparative media studies. The result reveals that democracy cannot obtain without media systems specifically structured to provide ideological diversity.

Purpose: Could the curse of knowledge influence how antagonized we are towards political outgroups? Do we assume others know what we know but still disagree with us? This research investigates how the curse of knowledge may affect us politically, i.e., be a cause of political polarization.

Background: Research on the curse of knowledge has shown that even when people are incentivized to act as if others do not know what they know, they are still influenced by the knowledge they have.

Methods: This study consists of five studies consisting of both experimental and non-experimental and within- and between-subjects survey designs. Each study collected samples of 152–1,048.

Results: Partisans on both sides overestimate the extent to which stories from their news sources were familiar to contrapartisans. Introducing novel, unknown facts to support their political opinion made participants rate political outgroup members more negatively. In an experimental design, there was no difference in judging an opponent who did not know the same issue-relevant facts and someone who did know the same facts. However, when asked to compare those who know to those who do not, participants judged those who do not know more favorably, and their ratings of all issue-opponents were closer to those issue-opponents who shared the same knowledge. In a debiasing experiment, those who received an epistemological treatment judged someone who disagreed more favorably.

Conclusion: This research provides evidence that the curse of knowledge may be a contributing cause of affective political polarization.

Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens’ rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing “knowledge constraints” on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, s...

There exists today a lively debate between those who believe that maximal IP protection should be extended throughout the world regardless of differing stages of national development, and those who believe that such an imposition would be harmful, if not deadly, to developing economies and societies. In this essay, I reexamine the debate, showing how much or little is actually known, and, it is hoped, to expose innocent fraud wherever it may be uncovered.

Social representations theory is unique within social psychology for its primary focus on information and its effects on society. Schema research likewise focuses on information, but only information in individual minds. Meme theory, while essentially a rediscription of what we already know, provides a helpful perspective on how ideas form, change, and spread. Together, these three approaches to information can help inform a political psychology capable of addressing the most pressing political problems we face today.

Ideology is a prototypical “contested concept,” though competing definitions can generally be sorted into pejorative and nonpejorative categories. Pejorative definitions consider ideology to be a set of false beliefs about the world and how it operates, typically facilitating exploitation or injustice. Nonpejorative definitions consider ideology to be something neutral (or its normative dimension to be undetermined a priori), a kind of systematized thinking about politics or political economy; a worldview. It is the latter definition that is most common in international relations scholarship outside of the Marxian tradition, and it will be used here. Values are commonly defined as rank-ordered ideas about what is desirable, transcending specific situations, that guide behavioral choices and influence evaluations. Given these two definitions, values are subsumed under ideology; they form the normative dimension of ideology. For example, A may value both self-determination and democracy (and A may see elections as a means of ensuring self-determination); but if A’s ideology pictures the international system as dominated by a superpower that regularly interferes in elections, she may support the decision of a less powerful state to avoid elections to evade the superpower’s interference. Ideology, as a systematized way of thinking about politics, can help adjudicate conflicts between values—as in this example, between self-determination and democracy. International relations scholarship has traditionally overlooked the influence of ideology and values on foreign policy and public opinion about foreign policy. Considerations of power maximization and balancing were commonly hypothesized to overwhelm any influence of ideational factors, such that the latter could be safely ignored as mere epiphenomena of the former. More recently, the variously named ideational, interpretivist, or constructivist turn in international relations has opened the way for IR scholars to investigate the effects of ideas within the international system. Foreign policy analysis, operating at a less abstract level, has been more open to ideational factors as influences on policymakers. Yet a great deal remains to be explored about the way ideology and values constrain and influence foreign policy decision-makers, and public opinion (which, in turn, may constrain and influence decision-makers). Ideology and values can be conceptualized at the micro level as beliefs held by individuals and at the macro level as widely shared beliefs (akin to “social representations”) enforced, inculcated, and/or reproduced by institutions.

Neoliberalism has been the dominant influence on economic policy in most of the world for nearly four decades. There has been a great deal of analysis of neoliberalism’s economic effects, but its psychological effects have received comparatively less attention. This article attempts to fill this gap, providing an assessment of neoliberalism according to psychological criteria. First, it describes the development and evolution of neoliberal theory, noting how it has changed over time. The psychological suppositions inherent in neoliberal theory are foregrounded, and judged by their correspondence to psychological research. Then, relevant psychological literature is reviewed and discussed to discover the possible psychological effects of neoliberal economic policies. The conclusion refers to the genesis of neoliberalism as a source of inspiration for crafting an alternative economic ideology better suited to human psychology.

Most research on national identity assumes that people think and therefore understand groups and themselves as members in basically the same way. We complement this approach by examining differences in the quality of people " s thinking. While many people think in the simple concrete categorical terms assumed in most research, we argue that some individuals either do not think categorically or they think about categories in a reflective complex way. Consequently, they construct their national identity differently. To test this, we conducted an online survey that included interactive problem-solving tasks to assess cognitive functioning and standard survey items to measure the quality, content and affect of participants " American identity. Our results indicate individuals think in qualitatively different ways and this is reflected in how they identify as Americans. Moreover this effect of cognitive differences is independent of and stronger than its common surrogate, level of education. We conclude with a consideration of the implications of these results for racist conceptions of nationality and democratic citizenship.

Past research about genetic influences on political ideology has revealed that ideology is partially heritable. Neurological research has revealed that ideological differences are reflected in patterns of brain structure and response, suggesting a direct genotype-phenotype link; at the same time, social and informational environments have also been found to affect brain structure and response. This has led to a " chicken-or-egg " question: do genes produce brains with ideological predispositions, or do social and informational environments do most of the heavy lifting? This article investigates the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors on ideological development, using a role play experiment on the development of opinions on a novel political issue. The results support the view that the process is bidirectional, suggesting that like most traits, political ideology is produced by the complex interplay of both genetic and (social/informational) environmental influences.

Motivated reasoning as a pervasive feature of human psychology poses challenges to the ideal of liberal democratic government, which relies on citizens’ rationality. Motivated reasoning is at least partially caused by a biased store of knowledge, a partial set of accumulated information that skews reasoning about important political issues. However, there is some evidence that specialized training in a given domain may reduce the effects of motivated reasoning within that domain. To test whether a similar phenomenon is evident in the field of international relations, a signal detection technique is used to measure knowledge of U.S. foreign policy among two samples, one of IR professors and one of laypersons. The results uncover significant differences between experts and nonexperts, indicating that training in IR helps to reduce biases in knowledge, potentially providing “knowledge constraints” on motivated reasoning. Nonetheless, some evidence of bias among IR professors remains, suggesting that knowledge constraints on motivated reasoning may not fully allay normative concerns of bias in the domain of international relations.

Achen and Bartels deliver a long-overdue attack upon apologetics for the US political system. They argue that the normatively-desirable " folk theory of democracy " (also known as democracy) is not an accurate description of the really-existing system of government in place in the US. Without a greater degree of economic and social equality, democracy will remain an unattainable ideal – no matter what sort of mathematical and rhetorical gymnastics apologists for the present system use. But their account of the gap between ideal and actual relies too heavily on the innate cognitive limitations of our psychology. Evolutionary and political epistemology, along with the conclusions of media research, provide a supplement resulting in a more complete and realistic account.

Past research on the link between anti-Semitism and criticism of the Israeli government has revealed a partial correlation between the two. However, among the political arguments that have inspired such research, one has gone unaddressed: that criticism of the Israeli government along with silence about more egregious human rights abuses committed elsewhere can only arise from anti-Semitism. This article investigates the link between knowledge of conflicts around the world, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and criticism of the Israeli and Saudi governments. Using a deeper index of anti-Israel opinions than prior research, the results indicate that some criticisms of the Israeli government are more reliable indicators of anti-Semitic sentiment than others. The findings are discussed with regard to how legitimate political criticism can be distinguished from prejudice in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This law review article examines the evidence on the effect of stronger IP laws (introduced during the process of international IP law harmonization initiated by the TRIPS agreement) on the economic development of developing countries. It has been argued by proponents of harmonization that stronger IP laws will provide a needed boost to the economic growth of developing (and even least-developed) countries. Critics of harmonization have argued that stronger IP laws will have the opposite effect. What has been largely overlooked in this debate is the strength of the evidentiary foundation upon which the arguments of both sides depend. The conclusion of this examination is that empirical evidence does not clearly support either side. However, the historical relationship of IP & development demonstrates, if anything, an inverse relationship between strong IP laws and successful economic development. In light of this result, John Kenneth Galbraith's "conventional wisdom" (widely-accepted falsehood) is an apt description of the position, well-represented in the US community of IP legal scholars, that the international harmonization of IP laws will help the economies of developing nations to grow.

This law review article was the result of research into the Bush administration’s strategy toward the newly-formed International Criminal Court (ICC). The dominant discourse on the subject of the US relationship to the ICC has focused on the US government's proffered reasons for its anti-ICC stance, and whether the so-called “Article 98 agreements" the US has been signing with dozens of other countries are “legal" or not. My research suggested that US government objections to the ICC (“unaccountability”, “prosecutorial abuse”) are mere procedural fig leaves to cover a substantive dispute the US government fears would not sit well domestically or internationally. Furthermore, the question of the “legality" of Article 98 agreements is moot without a discussion of the US government's motives in signing them - since in a Legal Realist sense “legality" is the equivalent of effectiveness, and how effective these agreements will prove to be is determined by the extent to which the US government is willing and able to ensure their enforcement. My research suggested that the US government will have an uphill battle to fight should the legality of its Article 98 agreements ever be called into question in a foreign or international court. However, since the motivation behind these agreements goes to the very core of US foreign policy – the use of US power to secure geopolitical and economic interests regardless of international law – Article 98 agreements may yet achieve their desired effect.

Cohn analogizes the introduction of neoclassical economics in China to the spread of Christianity under Western colonialism: economist-proselytizers truly believed that the ideas they propagated would benefit everyone, and they were supported in their mission by the U.S. government, business interests, Western philanthropies, and international institutions. In addition to these “push” factors coming from outside of China, there were domestic “pull” factors. The Chinese government saw practical and ideological benefits in neoclassical economics. It would allow Chinese officials to speak the same language as their foreign partners, facilitating business deals and the technology transfer China needed; and this idiom would also serve to narrow officials’ focus to profits and losses, “efficiency,” excluding broader socio-political goals. The neoclassical faith in the power of markets to transform private vice into public virtue would serve as an ideological legitimation for China’s turn down the capitalist road. And Chinese economists and economics students were attracted to neoclassical economics for its greater seeming scientificity and practicality – compared to Marxist economics, which seemed sterilely philosophical and ideological – an attraction that only increased as market reforms transformed daily life and made Marxist concepts seem increasingly outmoded (or worse: subversive). This combination of push and pull factors – or selection pressures, in evolutionary terms – is described as “invited influence.”

What is overlooked in scientific accounts of information? This is the question philosopher Peter Janich provides an answer to in What Is Information? In an attempt to denaturalize and demythologize the received view of a concept used within several fields of science, this book will be particularly valuable for scholars in communication and media studies, but also in the philosophy of science, evolutionary theory, neuroscience, and political science. Janich calls for the concept of information to be reembedded in communication, where the meaning and use of information are inextricably linked, and criticizes "metaphorical" applications of information in genetics, technology, and neuroscience.

This study examines how political knowledge affects voting behavior. By utilizing a bias-sensitive method of measuring politically relevant knowledge – on economic, foreign policy, and environmental issues – we were able to identify candidate-selection effects of policy-specific information. The study also traces how psychological traits affect political thinking within a partisan group, whereas most research has focused on psychological asymmetries across ideological and partisan groups. Based on previous research, we expected Sanders supporters and supporters of other “anti-establishment” candidates to have less accurate knowledge on these issues than Biden (and other establishment candidate) supporters, as the demographic groups that differentially supported Sanders tend to have lower levels of political knowledge. Instead, Sanders and anti-establishment candidate supporters were found to be more knowledgeable. We also found psychological asymmetries among Democrats and Democrat-leaning Independents, which were associated with candidate preference. Likewise, similar differences in knowledge and psychological traits were found between those planning to vote for Trump versus Biden in the general election. Overall, issue-specific political knowledge was found to be an important predictor of vote choice.

Within research on political preferences, specific knowledge about various issue areas is an under-researched predictor. In this article, the joint effects of specific knowledge about the current state of the US economy and standard demographic and ideological variables are investigated in a sample of 740 American internet users. Using a technique from signal detection theory, economic knowledge, along with demographic and ideological variables, is found to predict candidate preferences – but in different ways among Democrats and Republicans. Among Democrats, greater knowledge of negative aspects of the economy predicts support for Sanders over Clinton; among Republicans, greater knowledge of positive and negative aspects of the economy predicts support for Establishment candidates over Trump. Additionally, data from both survey respondents and county-level primary voting data are examined for effects of internet use on candidate preference, finding in both datasets a correlation between support for Sanders and internet use. The findings are discussed with regard to some of the surprising developments in the early 2016 US presidential race.