Motivated reasoning: Election integrity beliefs, outcome acceptance, and polarization before, during, and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

ABSTRACT: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election required voters to not only form opinions of leading candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but also to make judgments about the integrity of the election itself and what—if anything—to do about it. However, partisan motivated reasoning theory (Leeper and Slothuus, Political Psychology, 35(Suppl 1): 129–156; Lodge and Taber, The rationalizing voter, Cambridge University Press, 2013) suggests judgments are often strongly influenced toward affectively desirable conclusions. Before, during, and after election projections were announced, partisan supporters of Trump and Biden rated: judgments about voter fraud and foreign interference, their acceptance of the results, and their support for recourse against the outcome (e.g., legal challenges, legislative ov

SUBMITTER: Vail K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9513018 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature