Evaluation of public opinion signals: unraveling the role of politicians’ own opinions

Previous research focused on why politicians’ responsiveness to public opinion signals varies. Relatedly, this paper aims to address the role of politicians’ own opinions on how they process information about the preferences of the public. Starting from the theory of motivated reasoning, how information is gathered and assessed is influenced by the own opinion. As a result, the conclusion people derive from information tends to align with their own beliefs and attitudes. Applied to public opinion information, this means that politicians appraise counter-attitudinal public opinion signals as weaker and less worthy of being followed up in legislative action. In an experimental design, the dependent variable of our study is the quality evaluation (informedness, common good, salience) of a specific public opinion signal by politicians in 11 countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Israel, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland). Politicians were provided with information showing the percentages of citizens who were in favor or against a policy proposal. These numbers are based on real public opinion data. To be able to determine the motivated reasoning behavior, the opinion of the politician about that specific policy proposal was also measured in advance. So, our main expectation is that the quality of public opinion is assessed as being lower when it supports a position that the politicians disagree with; this is the main effect. We hypothesize that the effect of their own opinion is moderated as well. It is stronger when politicians (1) consider themselves to be delegates, (2) are specialized in the issue at stake, (3) hold opinions that match the majority of their own party colleagues, and (4) belong to parties that own the issue at stake. This study delves into the individual and party mechanisms that moderate the effect of politicians’ own opinions when processing and evaluating public opinion signals. Their positive or negative evaluation may serve as a precondition for politicians to undertake action and thus act responsively or not.