You Cannot be Serious: The Impact of Accuracy Incentives on Partisan Bias in Reports of Economic Perceptions

When surveyed about economic conditions, supporters of the president’s party often report more positive conditions than its opponents. Scholars have interpreted this finding to mean that partisans cannot even agree on matters of fact. We test an alternative interpretation: Partisans give partisan congenial answers even when they have, or could have inferred, information less flattering to the party they identify with. To test this hypothesis, we administered two surveys to nationally representative samples, experimentally manipulating respondents’ motivation to be accurate via monetary incentives and on-screen appeals. Both treatments reduced partisan differences in reports of economic conditions significantly. Many partisans interpret factual questions about economic conditions as opinion questions, unless motivated to see them otherwise. Typical survey Online Appendix available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00014127_app Supplementary Material available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00014127_supp MS submitted on 12 September 2014; final version received 29 July 2015 ISSN 1554-0626; DOI 10.1561/100.00014127 © 2015 M. Prior, G. Sood, and K. Khanna