Partisan Motivated Reasoning
Motivated reasoning refers to an individual’s goal in the context of forming an attitude. We follow Taber and Lodge (2006) and focus on two primary motivations in the opinion formation process: directional and accuracy goals. We begin by discussing the former goal and then turn to the latter. A directional goal refers to when a ‘‘person is motivated to arrive at a particular conclusion’’ (Kunda 1999, p. 236), e.g., one that is consistent with a person’s party identification (Taber and Lodge 2006; thus we focus here strictly on partisan directional goals). Individuals weigh information consistent with their existing beliefs or social identities more heavily than contradictory information when motivated by a directional goal in