Blumenau, Jack;
(2025)
Does Reason-Giving Affect Political Attitudes?
British Journal of Political Science
, 55
, Article e64. 10.1017/S0007123424000875.
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Abstract
What are the effects of reason-giving on political attitudes? Both political philosophers and political scientists have speculated that defending proposals with reasons may change voters’ preferences. However, while models of attitude formation predict that the explicit justification of one’s political views may result in attitudes that are more ideologically consistent, less polarized, and more stable, empirical work has not assessed the connection between reason-giving and attitudes. Implementing a survey experiment in which some respondents provide reasons before stating their opinions on six issues in UK politics, I find that reason-giving has very limited effects on the constraint, stability, or polarization of the public’s political attitudes. These findings have important implications for our understanding of deliberative conceptions of democracy – in which reason-giving is a central component – as well as for our understanding of the quality of voters’ political opinions.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Does Reason-Giving Affect Political Attitudes? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0007123424000875 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123424000875 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Public opinion; political attitudes; deliberation; reason-giving; survey experiments |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205649 |
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