American Educational Research Journal
February 2017, Vol. 54, No. 1, pp. 3–34
DOI: 10.3102/0002831216679817
Ó 2016 AERA. http://aerj.aera.net

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age:
Confronting the Challenges of MotivatedReasoning and Misinformation
Joseph Kahne
University of California, Riverside
Benjamin Bowyer
Santa Clara University
This article investigates youth judgments of the accuracy of truth claims tied
to controversial public issues. In an experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey of youth ages 15 to 27 (N = 2,101), youth wereasked to judge the accuracy of one of several simulated online posts.
Consistent with research on motivated reasoning, youth assessments
depended on (a) the alignment of the claim with one’s prior policy position
and to a lesser extent on (b) whether the post included an inaccurate statement. To consider ways educators might improve judgments of accuracy, we
also investigated the influence of political knowledge and exposure to media
literacy education. We found that political knowledge did not improve judgments of accuracy but that media literacy education did.
KEYWORDS: civic education, digital media, media literacy, motivated reasoning

Introduction
This study takes as a starting point the proposition that democracy
works better when participants care about the accuracy of truth claims.
This premise is hardly controversial. As Jennifer Hochschild and Katherine
Levine Einstein (2015) write, ‘‘Almost no one disputes that citizens should
acquire and use appropriate and accurate information when making political

JOSEPH KAHNE is the Ted and Jo Dutton Presidential Professor of Educational Policy
and Politics at the University of California, Riverside, Graduate School of
Education, 900 University Ave., Sproul Hall 2109, Riverside, CA 92521; USA; e-mail:jkahne@ucr.edu. He studies young people’s political development and the factorsthat shape it.
BENJAMIN BOWYER is a lecturer in the Political Science Department at Santa Clara
University. His research focuses on the effects of social context on political attitudes
and behavior.

Kahne and Bowyer
and policy choices’’ (p. 6). Indeed, the belief that accurate information willbolster democratic decision making and enable societal improvement isdeeply embedded in the enlightenment paradigm, pragmatist beliefs, deliberative ideals, and other prominent conceptions of a strong, just, and productive democracy. The benefits of engagement with credible evidence
stem from improving knowledge and understanding of issues, enablingassessment of varied viewpoints and policies, identification of one’s interests
in relation to varied policies, and supporting formulation of more effective
responses to societal issues (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Dewey, 1927;
Mill, 1859/1956). Moreover, widespread use and circulation of misinformation can undermine the public’s ability to identify desirable policies, their
desire to engage in politics, and their sense of the very legitimacy of democratic governance (see Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Hochschild & Einstein,2015). In short, there is a strong case for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s oftquoted statement that ‘‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but nottheir own facts.’’
Unfortunately, we often experience the kinds of political debates that
frustrated Moynihan—ones in which highly partisan individuals and groups
have their own facts. Studies show that Republicans and Democrats (or conservatives and liberals, depending on the study) differ in their beliefs about
the fundamental facts that relate to many of the most important issues inrecent years, including the Iraq War (Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2003), income
inequality (Bartels, 2009), and climate change (McCright & Dunlap, 2011).
Moreover, these differences in beliefs regarding factual knowledge are notmerely the product of innocent ignorance. Instead, the deliberate distribution of misinformation by some politicians, political organizations, and interest groups is common (Hochschild & Einstein, 2015; Lewandowsky, Ecker,
Seifert, Schwarz, & Cook, 2012). In addition, partisan polarization among
political officials in the United States has expanded dramatically over the
past several decades (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006). And among theelectorate, the affective ties associated with partisanship—the degree towhich partisans dislike and impute negative traits to members of the otherparty—also has increased. To cite one stark example, in 1960, roughly 5%of Republicans and Democrats said they would be ‘‘displeased’’ if their childmarried someone from the other party. By 2010, these numbers had grown
to 49% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats (Iyengar, Sood, & Lelkes,
2012). These trends along with changes in the media environment such as
the diminished role of gatekeepers and vastly expanded opportunities forcirculation of both information and misinformation in the Digital Age
make exposure to inaccurate information both more common and more difficult to detect (Garrett, 2011; Lewandowsky et al., 2012; Rojecki & Meraz,2016). As a result of these changes, the role of schools in promoting thecapacity and commitment to use and identify accurate information will beever more important in the Digital Age.
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Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
Judging Political Claims: An Educational Priority
Those pursuing the democratic purposes of schooling have long argued
that educators should prepare youth to be informed about controversial
issues, able to critically assess evidence and factual claims related to such
issues, and able to judge and construct well-reasoned arguments (e.g.,
Merriam, 1934). As a means of pursuing these goals, civic education scholars
have, for example, highlighted ways that controversial issue discussions candeepen understanding, promote political interest, and help students develop
skills needed to craft well-warranted arguments (e.g., Campbell, 2008; Hess
& McAvoy, 2015; Parker, 2006; Torney-Purta, 2002).
These educational priorities are also reflected in current educational
standards and policies. Authors of the Common Core State Standards(CCSS), for example, write that evidence-based reasoning is ‘‘essential toboth private deliberation and responsible citizenship in a democratic republic’’ (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices & Council ofChief State School Officers, 2010, p. 3). And the standards embedded in
the CCSS attend to these concerns. Ninth and 10th graders, for example,
are expected to demonstrate the ability to ‘‘identify false statements and fallacious reasoning’’ (p. 40).
Standard educational responses to these priorities often emphasize content knowledge and generic analytic abilities. However, a growing body ofresearch demonstrates the limited value of knowledge and analytic abilities
when it comes to making evidence-based judgments in highly partisan contexts. In particular, in a polarized environment, judgments of truth claims areoften shaped more by whether or not individuals’ prior perspectives on theissue align with the claims than by how well informed the individuals are or
their capacities to reason (Lavine, Johnston, & Steenbergen, 2012; Taber &Lodge, 2006).
Unfortunately, despite concern regarding these priorities, educational
researchers have rarely examined whether and how school practices cancounter these partisan biases. Since scholars from political science, psychology, and communications have done significant conceptual and empirical
work on these issues (although they have not addressed the educational
implications of their findings), we begin by reviewing that work. We thenexamine data from the Youth Participatory Politics (YPP) Survey, a largescale nationally representative survey of youth ages 15 to 27, to examine
the ways that prior beliefs shape judgment of the accuracy of political content and ways that actions by educators may influence these dynamics.
Specifically, the survey includes an experiment that was designed to simulate
the sorts of political content that circulate on social media. Participants wererandomly assigned to read a post regarding economic inequality and tax policy that expressed either a conservative or a liberal perspective and that contained accurate or inaccurate information. They were then asked to rate the5Kahne and Bowyer
post’s accuracy. We assessed the degree to which youths’ judgments were
influenced by the posts’ alignment with their prior political perspectives
and whether the post contained misinformation. As detailed in the following,
we found that youth tended to rate posts as ‘‘accurate’’ when the postsaligned with their prior views on the issue (irrespective of whether thepost contained factual inaccuracies). In addition, we tested whether two
potential supports (political knowledge and media literacy instruction)
might help counteract these dynamics. In what follows, we discuss what
we found and the implications of those findings for furthering the democratic aims of education.
Biased Judgments of Evidence and Arguments Are Common When It Comes
to Controversial Issues
Social science research indicates that when individuals encounter highly
partisan issues, numerous perceptual biases influence their judgments oftruth claims. These biases also limit the degree to which individuals learn
through exposure to information and from deliberation more generally.
Scholars often emphasize the distinction between two fundamental motivations that affect the ways that individuals process information: directional
motivation and accuracy motivation (Kunda, 1990; Taber & Lodge, 2006;
for a review, see Druckman, 2012). When individuals are guided by directional motivation (the desire to justify conclusions that align with priorbeliefs), information that is consistent with one’s prior preferences tends
to be accepted uncritically and judged positively, whereas information thatruns contrary to one’s preconceptions is subjected to greater scrutiny andjudged less positively (Ditto, Scepansky, Munro, Apanovitch, & Lockhart,
1998). By contrast, when motivated by accuracy goals, ‘‘[Individuals] expend
more cognitive effort on issue-related reasoning, attend to relevant information more carefully, and process it more deeply, often using more complex
rules’’ (Kunda, 1990, p. 481).
Scholars find that directional motivation is especially common in theprocessing of political information. Prior research demonstrates that sociopolitical concepts are affect laden and that when they are invoked (even preconsciously), they trigger ‘‘hot cognition,’’ whereby these positive andnegative feelings come to mind automatically and bias subsequent information processing (Lodge & Taber, 2005). This process of directional motivatedreasoning leads individuals (regardless of ideological leaning) to seek out
evidence that aligns with their preexisting views (confirmation bias),
work to dismiss or find counterarguments for perspectives that contradict
their beliefs (disconfirmation bias), and evaluate arguments that alignwith their views as stronger and more accurate than opposing arguments(prior attitude effect) (Kunda, 1990; Taber & Lodge, 2006). Moreover, rather
than learning from exposure to new information, individuals who encounter6

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
new information that contradicts their prior perspective often become evenmore favorable to their prior beliefs (Redlawsk, 2002).
These dynamics related to directional motivation deserve careful attention from educators. They constrain individuals’ ability to learn, and in particular, they appear to limit learning from exposure to diverse viewpoints
when it comes to politicized topics. Moreover, contrary to common assumptions, the biases associated with directional motivation are greatest among
those with the most political knowledge. Taber and Lodge (2006) find thathighly knowledgeable individuals—who possess the capacity to counterargue information and arguments that are contrary to their own views—tend
to show a greater bias in favor of arguments consistent with their priorbeliefs and take a longer time processing arguments that contradict theirbeliefs than they do arguments that align with their prior beliefs because
the contradictory arguments are subjected to greater critical scrutiny.
At the same time, as Druckman (2012) notes, the dominance of directional motivation is not inevitable. A variety of contexts and interventions
appear to foster accuracy motivation and diminish directional motivation.
Such interventions and contexts include requiring individuals to justify theiropinions, encouraging them to consider varied perspectives, and prompting
reflection on one’s reasoning process. As we discuss in the following, thesefindings highlight priorities and norms that educators value and may haveways to promote.
Changes in the Media and Information Environment
As a result of changes in the news media environment, particularly thegrowing importance of cable TV and the Internet, it is now far easier for individuals to choose the source and partisan slant of the information and perspectives to which they are exposed (Prior, 2013). These changes havecoincided with a dramatic increase in partisan polarization among both politicians and the electorate (Barber & McCarty, 2013). These dual dynamics
make it far easier and more likely for individuals to act on confirmationbiases and enter echo chambers (Sunstein, 2007) or be subjected to filter
bubbles (Pariser, 2011) through which search engines guide exposure
toward views and information that align with views and interests one alreadyholds. And this process can create a reinforcing cycle. Studies show that
exposure to views that align with one’s own fosters attitudinal polarization(Stroud, 2011). In sum, these changes in the media environment appear
likely to increase individuals’ abilities to act in response to directional motivation and by fostering more extreme partisan leanings, increase the degree
to which individuals’ judgments are driven by directional motivation.
Adding to these dynamics, a tremendous amount of political content
now flows through social networking sites and other online platforms without being subject to vetting or credibility checks (Metzger, 2007). For
7

Kahne and Bowyer
example, an analysis of the 2011 YPP survey of youth ages 15 to 25 indicatedthat young people were roughly as likely to receive news on civic and political issues from Twitter and Facebook posts by family and friends as they
were from newspapers and magazines read both online and offline(Cohen, Kahne, Bowyer, Middaugh, & Rogowski, 2012). In addition, thenumber of youth using social media to spread content is increasing dramatically. Pew Survey data indicate that the number of youth who posted political news on a social networking site grew from 13% in 2008 to 32% in 2012
(Rainie, Smith, Schlozman, Brady, & Verba, 2012; Smith, 2013).
Users are confronted with numerous challenges when assessing thecredibility of the information accessed through these online sources ofnews, particularly given the widespread presence of political misinformation. Youth audiences evaluating a website’s credibility may rely on criteriasuch as the site’s surface characteristics (Sundar, 2008) or whether the site
was the first result provided by a search engine (Hargittai, Fullerton,
Menchen-Trevino, & Thomas, 2010). These heuristics for assessing the credibility of information sources are not adequate when evaluating politicalinformation. The combination of highly partisan sources, homophilous
online networks, lessened influence of gatekeepers vetting the accuracy oftruth claims, and the speed with which information can spread through digital media means that a great deal of political misinformation circulates
online (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). Indeed, the prevalence of ideologicallyhomophilous online networks can encourage the viral spread of politicallymotivated misinformation ‘‘among like-minded audiences who can now
selectively attend to information based on their ideological beliefs and perspectives’’ (Rojecki & Meraz, 2016, p. 38). Moreover, as Lewandowsky et al.
(2012) explain, both analytic and intuitive processing lead individuals to
accept content that is consistent with their prior beliefs because it ‘‘feels
right.’’ This can encourage both the acceptance of misinformation as true
and the further spread of falsehoods through social media. Garrett (2011)
finds that the effects of exposure to false rumors that circulated online during
the 2008 presidential campaign were conditional on the political biases of
those exposed to the rumors. Exposure to emails containing rumors about
Barack Obama did not seem to affect the beliefs or behavior of supportersof the candidate; however, among nonsupporters, increased exposure wasassociated with a greater likelihood both of believing the false rumors about
Obama and of forwarding the emails to others.
In addition, misinformation is particularly challenging because it is difficult to correct in the presence of directional motivated reasoning. Unlike theuninformed who are more likely to learn from exposure to new information,
the misinformed are confident that they are correct, resist factually correct
information, and use their misinformation to form their policy preferences(Kuklinski, Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder, & Rich, 2000). Furthermore, a ‘‘backfire
effect’’ can occur where presenting the misinformed with correct information
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Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
not only often fails to reduce their misperceptions but actually intensifies
their commitment to their inaccurate ‘‘knowledge’’ (Nyhan & Reifler, 2010).
Directional motivated reasoning is not always problematic at the level ofthe individual. Individuals might be rational not to abandon prior perspectives to which they have given considerable prior thought and to be skeptical of new information that contradicts what they have already learned about
an issue (Lodge & Taber, 2013). However, in the presence of misinformation,
directional motivated reasoning has unambiguously negative implications
for democratic deliberation. When individuals accept misinformation used
to support policy arguments or even worse, when they choose to trumpet
that misinformation to justify their position on an issue, they may welllead others who are not aware that the information is inaccurate to adopt
a position they would not otherwise hold. In addition, these actions maylead those who hold opposing views and who are aware that the claims
being made are inaccurate to believe that those they disagree with are ignorant—perhaps willfully—and to doubt the likelihood of reasoned dialogue
in a democracy.
Research Questions
Although educators value and work to promote attention to the accuracy of information and the quality of arguments, educational researchers
have rarely conducted systematic studies of the degree to which youths’ partisan beliefs bias their judgments of arguments and of truth claims regarding
controversial issues. As a result, we lack information regarding the degree towhich particular educational experiences or educational outcomes influence
the impact of partisan biases on judgments regarding politically charged
arguments or truth claims. Educational researchers are, however, well positioned to undertake studies that address such concerns. Indeed, we see significant value in this research agenda. Such studies could provide muchneeded guidance to civic educators committed to supporting the oftneglected democratic purposes of schools.
The study detailed in the following responds to this need. In particular,
we conduct an experiment designed to test how directional motivation andaccuracy motivation affect young people’s judgments of the sorts of truth
claims made about political issues that circulate through social media.
Next, we examine how two factors that educators could promote (students’political knowledge and exposure to medial literacy learning opportunities)
might affect the degree to which directional and accuracy motivation shape
students’ judgments of accuracy. Specifically, the experiment was designed
to address the following research questions about the relative influence of
directional and accuracy motivation:
Research Question 1: How does directional motivation influence assessments oftruth claims?

9Kahne and Bowyer
Research Question 2: How does accuracy motivation influence assessments oftruth claims?
Research Question 3: How are assessments of truth claims influenced by factorsthat schools can promote, such as students’ political knowledge and exposure
to media literacy learning opportunities?
Research Question 3a: Do these factors influence the degree to which directional
motivation shapes assessments of truth claims?
Research Question 3b: Do these factors affect the degree to which accuracy motivation affects assessments of truth claims?

Methods
Our examination of these questions draws on data from the Youth
Participatory Politics Survey, a nationally representative survey of young
people between the ages of 15 and 27 in the United States. Specifically,
we embedded an experiment within this survey, which was administeredby the GfK Group (formerly Knowledge Networks), a private company
that maintains an online panel that is representative of the United States population. The sample for the YPP survey was drawn from two sources: GfK’s
KnowledgePanel (KP)—a nationally representative, probability-basedInternet panel1—and a supplemental Address-Based Sample (ABS) recruitedspecifically for this survey. The YPP survey included oversamples of African
American, Asian American, and Latino youth, and the sampling frames werestratified by age and race. The KP was used to draw a direct sample of persons aged 18 to 27 as well as to draw a sample of parents with offspring
between the ages of 15 and 27. From the latter group, the parent was asked
to identify the race and ethnicity of each person aged 15 to 27 in the household, and if any individuals belonged to the target population and the parent
consented to their participation, one eligible household member was asked
to take the survey.2
The ABS used the US Postal Service Delivery Sequence File as the sample frame. Selected households were sent a letter that described the study
and invited one eligible household member to complete the survey online.
The letter offered a monetary incentive for participation and provided a website address and unique password to complete the survey online. Initial nonresponders were sent a reminder postcard after about one week, and after
about another two weeks, attempts were made to contact nonresponding
households by telephone.
We analyze the responses of those participants who took theEnglish language survey online (N = 2,101).3 Descriptive statistics, including
demographic and educational variables, for this sample are reported inTable 1.4 The median respondent completed the online survey in 30
minutes.

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Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
Table 1
Characteristics of Online Survey Participants
Charactersitics
GenderMale
FemaleRace/ethnicity
White
African American
Asian American
Latino (any race)
Other/multiple races
Age
15–18
19–22
23–27
educational status and attainment
In middle school or high school
In college or vocational school
Not enrolled—no high school diploma
Not enrolled—high school diploma
Not enrolled—some college
Not enrolled—BA degree or higher

%

43
57
31
26
15
24
4
41
30
30
32
33
4
10
11
10

Experimental Design
In the midst of a survey about their online activity and political participation, respondents were exposed to the experimental treatment. This treatment was designed by the authors to incorporate relevant features of content
that circulates online through social media, a major source of political information for young people (Cohen et al., 2012; Media Insight Project, 2015).
We piloted the treatment to ensure that students were answering the questions in a manner consistent with the purpose of the items.5
Survey participants were randomly assigned to see one of six ‘‘posts’’—apicture (either a graph or a political cartoon) accompanied by a short comment—on the topics of economic inequality and tax policy. Figure 1 displays
each of the posts as well as the number of participants assigned to eachgroup, which ranged from 204 in Group C to 269 in Group B.6 These topics
were prominent and polarizing issues in political discussions at the time, following the 2011 Occupy movement and 2012 Presidential campaign.
As shown in Figure 1, these posts were manipulated to vary along two
dimensions: political ideology7 and the type of argument employed. By varying these two aspects of the posts simultaneously, we are able to gauge therelative influences of directional motivation and accuracy motivation on

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Kahne and Bowyer

Figure 1. ‘‘Posts’’ seen by experimental groups by ideology and type of argument.

participants’ reactions. The comments were designed to be equivalent instyle (two short, declarative sentences) while presenting opposite positions.
Each comment was accompanied by a visual (graph or cartoon) that might
be deployed by a supporter of that policy position. Participants assigned
to Groups A, B, and C read a comment that presented a liberal positionon the tax rates of wealthy individuals (the second sentence of the comment
read, ‘‘Their taxes should go up!’’). Those assigned to Groups D, E, and F
were exposed to a conservative argument (the sentence read, ‘‘Tax rates
shouldn’t go up!’’).
In addition to their ideological position, the posts also varied in the typeof argument that they employed. Groups A and D saw a post that was
designed to present a subjective, emotive appeal without any empirical evidence. Those participants in the liberal condition (A) read, ‘‘The rich canafford to pay higher taxes,’’ while those in the conservative condition (D)read, ‘‘Successful Americans are already paying enough in taxes.’’ Both statements are inherently subjective and are phrased in such a way that supporters of the policy stance would be likely to accept the assertion while
opponents would not. The statements were paired with a cartoon that wasconsistent with the opinion expressed in the post. Specifically, Group A
viewed a cartoon of Mr. Monopoly dancing on the grave of the ‘‘American
middle class,’’ and Group D saw a man being shaken upside down by the
IRS. Neither cartoon presents evidence on behalf of the policy position;
instead, both present emotive appeals on behalf of the purported victimsof economic inequality (Condition A) or tax policy (Condition D). Both
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Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
cartoons are characteristic of the kinds of cartoons used on the Internet toillustrate a perspective.
Groups B and E read the same two sentences as did Groups A and D,
respectively, but the post that they viewed contained a graph rather thana cartoon. These two groups were presented with graphs containing accurate data that were constructed to be as equivalent as possible while presenting facts that were commonly cited by liberals (in Condition B) or byconservatives (in Condition E). ‘‘The Distribution of Wealth in the US’’ graphseen by Group B was based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current
Population Survey, and ‘‘The Distribution of Income Taxes Paid in the US’’seen by Group E was based on data from the Internal Revenue Service:
Both were attributed to ‘‘US Government Statistics’’ in the graph to be consistent across conditions without being inaccurate. The two particular statistics were chosen because their distributions are remarkably similar: 10% of
the U.S. population possess about 70% of the total wealth, and 10% pay
about 70% of federal income taxes. All other details of the two graphs(e.g., color schemes and fonts) are identical. The main difference between
these posts and those seen by Groups A and D is that while the latter provided strictly emotive arguments, the arguments viewed by Groups B andE were supported by evidence.
The final pair of experimental conditions was designed to test whether
the presence of misinformation affects young people’s judgments of theaccuracy of truth claims. Participants in Groups C and F viewed the same
cartoons as did Groups A and D, respectively. However, instead of the subjective statements read by Groups A and D, the first sentences of the posts
read by Groups C and F presented as fact a claim that was objectively false.
Group C read that ‘‘90% of the rich don’t pay any taxes at all,’’ and Group F
read that ‘‘1% of Americans pay 90% of all taxes.’’ Not only are these statements inaccurate, they are wildly so, erring by orders of magnitude, notmere percentage points.8 Thus, the purpose of these two conditions is not
to test young people’s knowledge of the details of the tax distribution but
rather to see whether their judgments are influenced by inclusion of a substantial falsehood.9 Overall, then, the six experimental conditions provide
a liberal and conservative version of three types of arguments: anevidence-based argument, an emotive opinion statement, and an opinion
backed by misinformation.
Dependent and Independent Variables
Judgment of Accuracy
Respondents’ judgments of the accuracy of the post they saw is ourdependent variable. Immediately after viewing the post, participants wereasked to rate the accuracy of the comment. Specifically, respondents placed
themselves on a 4-point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree
13Kahne and Bowyer
regarding the statement, ‘‘I think this comment is accurate.’’ In summarizing
psychological studies of motivated reasoning in a variety of contexts, Ditto etal. (1998) conclude that research consistently demonstrates that ‘‘information
one wants to believe is perceived as more valid or accurate than information
one prefers not to believe’’ (p. 54).
Alignment With Political Beliefs
To operationalize whether a post aligned with a participant’s priorbeliefs, we considered the ideology of the post in conjunction with participants’ responses to a question about the appropriate role for the government
in reducing income inequality. This question, administered in the survey
prior to the experiment, asked participants to place themselves along a scaleaccording to their beliefs about what the ‘‘government in Washington’’should do to address income differences, ranging from 1 (the government
ought to reduce the income differences between rich and poor) to 7 (the government should not concern itself with reducing this income difference
between the rich and the poor).10 Those participants who placed themselves
on liberal end of the scale (points 1–3, N = 1,001) were coded as ‘‘ideologically aligned’’ if they were assigned to Groups A, B, or C and as ‘‘ideologically unaligned’’ if they were assigned to Groups D, E, or F. Participants whoplaced themselves at the conservative end of the attitude scale (points 5–7,
N = 545) were coded as ‘‘ideologically unaligned’’ if they were assigned toGroups A, B, or C and as ‘‘ideologically aligned’’ if they were assigned toGroups D, E, or F. Respondents who placed themselves at the midpoint of
the scale (4, N = 524) were excluded from the analyses as the hypotheses
regarding the effects of ideological alignment do not apply to individuals
who are ambivalent on the issue.
Nature of Argument
As described previously and shown in Figure 1, the experimental conditions also varied the nature of the argument employed in the post. We classify respondents according to which experimental group they wereassigned. Namely, participants assigned to Groups A or D were exposed
to an emotive argument, those assigned to Groups B or E saw anevidence-based argument, and those in Groups C or F read an argumentwith misinformation. In the multivariate analyses, these groupings are operationalized as dummy variables, with the misinformative argument serving
as the baseline condition.
Political Knowledge
We measure political knowledge by summing the number of correct
responses a participant gave on a battery of three questions about the14

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
American political system. These three items are a subset of the battery of
items shown by Delli Carpini and Keeter (1996) to be a reliable and valid
measure of general political knowledge and sophistication.11 This measure
has also been shown to be strongly related to awareness of current events(Price & Zaller, 1993) and stability in political attitudes (Zaller, 1990).
Thus, our measure of political knowledge serves as a proxy for being politically informed in general, not just a measure of knowledge of specific political facts.
Media Literacy Learning Opportunities
Given the increasing difficulty of judging political claims—especiallyonline—many are advocating increasing provision of civic media literacy
education (Hobbs, 2010). Our focus in this study is on media literacy learning opportunities that aim to promote accurate judgment of truth claims.
Exposure to media literacy learning opportunities that aim to promote
such accurate judgment is measured by a scale created by summing
responses to two questions asking respondents to recall their experiencesin school. Respondents were asked how often they had ‘‘Discussed how
to tell if the information you find online is trustworthy’’ and ‘‘Discussed
the importance of evaluating the evidence that backs up people’s opinions’’
in their classes.12 These experiences tap into two primary ways by which an
accuracy motivation might be instilled through media literacy education: bycultivating skills for judging accuracy and developing commitment to a normof accuracy.
Hypotheses
The first phase of our study addresses our first two research questions
regarding the relative effects of directional motivation and accuracy motivation on individuals’ judgments of accuracy. We examine these relationships
by comparing accuracy ratings across the different experimental conditions.
Specifically, in order to assess the influence of directional motivation, we
compare the responses of participants who saw an ideologically aligned
post to those of participants who were presented an ideologically unaligned
post, controlling for the type and quality of argument employed in the post.
This approach of varying the partisan or ideological direction of an argument
while holding the quality of argument constant is consistent with other studies of motivated reasoning (Taber & Lodge, 2006). Since the posts in eachpair of experimental conditions (A and D, B and E, C and F) are equivalent
in their accuracy, the difference in ratings between the ideologically aligned
and unaligned conditions reflects the effects of directional motivation. If participants are guided by directional motivation, then we hypothesize(Hypothesis 1) that those participants assigned to an ideologically aligned
post will be more likely to judge the post as accurate than those who
15Kahne and Bowyer
were assigned to a post that did not align with their predispositions (holding
constant the kind of argument being made).
To assess the impact of accuracy motivation, we analyze the responsesof participants who were assigned to an ideologically aligned condition
only. By restricting this analysis to ideologically aligned conditions, wehold constant the influence of directional motivation. While the effect of
directional motivation should be the same in all three ideologically aligned
conditions, the effect of accuracy motivation should vary by the type of argument employed in the post. In particular, it is in the experimental conditions
involving an ideologically aligned post that contains misinformation that
directional motivation and accuracy motivation are manipulated to be atodds with one another. For liberals, this occurs if they were assigned toGroup C, and for conservatives, it occurs if they assigned to Group F. In
these conditions, individuals who possess the will and capacity to act on
accuracy motivation would be expected to identify their assigned post’scomment as being inaccurate in spite of their partisan motivation to agreewith its policy stance. By contrast, the posts seen by Groups A, B, D, andE are subjective enough that someone who agreed with its point of viewmight be able to make a reasonable case for why it is accurate.13
Consequently, we would expect (Hypothesis 2) that participants exposed
to an ideologically aligned post will be less likely to rate the post as accurate
if they were assigned to a misinformative post than if they were assigned toan evidence-based or emotive post.
After testing the main effects of the experimental manipulations, we turn
our attention to the questions of how the educational characteristics andexperiences of individual participants may influence these dynamics. We
examine whether the relative effects of directional motivation and accuracy
motivation on judgments of accuracy vary according to two characteristics ofthe participants: political knowledge and exposure to media literacy education. Prior research (e.g., Taber & Lodge, 2006) leads us to expect that theeffects of directional motivation will be greatest for those individuals who
possess the most political knowledge. Consequently, we expect that
(Hypothesis 3) there will be an interaction effect between political knowledge and being exposed to an ideologically aligned post. Specifically, we
expect that the difference in the accuracy ratings of participants who areassigned to an ideologically aligned post and those assigned to an unaligned
post will be greater for participants with high levels of political knowledge
than it is for participants with less political knowledge. In particular, sincethose individuals with more political knowledge ‘‘possess greater ammunition with which to counterargue incongruent facts, figures, and arguments’’(Taber & Lodge, 2006, p. 757), we expect that participants with high levels ofpolitical knowledge will be less likely to rate ideologically unaligned posts as
accurate than participants with less knowledge.

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Similarly, media literacy learning opportunities may help students better
understand the meaning of political communications. To the extent that thisis true, individuals who received instruction in media literacy will be more
likely to identify whether a political message to which they are exposed isconsistent with their prior beliefs. Thus, we expect that (Hypothesis 4) there
will be an interaction effect between media literacy learning opportunities
and whether the post is ideologically aligned.
There are reasons to expect that the relative effect of accuracy motivation on judgments of the posts’ accuracy will be conditional on both an individual’s political knowledge and media literacy learning opportunities.
Conventional wisdom would lead one to expect that those with more political knowledge would tend to have greater capacity to recognize if a postcontained factual inaccuracies and to be able to make a judgment basedon accuracy motivation. Thus, we hypothesize (Hypothesis 5) that there
will be an interaction effect between political knowledge and the presenceof misinformation in a post. We expect that highly knowledgeable individuals will be less likely to judge posts that contain misinformation as accurate
than they are the other posts. Moreover, we expect that highly knowledgeable individuals will be less likely to judge posts that contain misinformationas accurate than are individuals with less knowledge.
The central rationale for media literacy instruction is that it should
increase individuals’ attentiveness to the accuracy of information (a normof valuing accuracy) as well as the skills to assess accuracy. Thus, wehypothesize (Hypothesis 6) that there will be an interaction effect between
media literacy learning opportunities and the presence of misinformation ina post. We expect that those youth who report having received the mostmedia literacy learning opportunities will be less likely to judge posts containing misinformation as accurate relative to the posts without misinformation. In
addition, we expect that those individuals with more media literacy education
will be less likely to judge posts containing misinformation as accurate thanare youth who did not receive any such learning opportunities.
Statistical Methods
To investigate the first research question regarding how directional motivation influences judgments of accuracy, we compare the average responsesof participants exposed to an ideologically aligned post with those who wereassigned to an unaligned post, holding constant the type and quality of argument. To address the second research question about the influence of accuracy motivation, we restrict our attention to those participants assigned to an
ideologically aligned condition and compare the average responses acrossthe three different argument types. For both of these analyses, responses
to the question about whether the post is accurate are collapsed into
a dummy variable (coded 0 for strongly disagree or disagree and 1 for agree
17Kahne and Bowyer
or strongly agree). We employ t tests to evaluate whether there are statistically significant differences in the means of this dummy variable acrossthe experimental groups.14
To investigate the third research question regarding whether the effects
of directional motivation and accuracy motivation on judgments of accuracy
are conditional on political knowledge and media literacy learning, we estimate a series of multivariate models that include interactions between theexperimental conditions and, respectively, political knowledge and media
literacy learning opportunities. In these analyses, we use the full range ofthe four-category dependent variable, and since this is an ordinal variable,
we employ ordered logit regression.
Specifically, Models I through III evaluate the hypotheses about theeffects of directional motivation on accuracy ratings. Models I and II are estimated as preliminary steps prior to the tests of the conditional hypotheses.
Model I includes a dummy variable to capture the effects of the ideologicalalignment of the post as well as controls for the type of argument employedin the post and demographic variables.15 Model II adds political knowledge
and media literacy learning opportunities. Model III provides our tests ofHypotheses 3 and 4 by adding interaction terms between political knowledge and media literacy learning opportunities, respectively, and the ideological alignment of the post.
A similar logic is applied in Models IV through VI, which test the hypotheses regarding accuracy motivation, though these models are estimated for
only those participants assigned to a pro-attitudinal condition. Model IV
includes the dummy variables for the type of argument used in the post
and control variables only, and Model V adds political knowledge and media
literacy learning opportunities. Model VI includes the interaction terms
between political knowledge and media literacy learning opportunities,
respectively, and the type of argument dummy variables, in order to test
Hypotheses 5 and 6.

Results
Directional Motivation and Judgments of Truth Claims
To investigate the first research question regarding how directional motivation influences judgments of accuracy, we compare the responses of participants exposed to an ideologically aligned post with those who wereassigned to an unaligned post, holding constant the type and quality of argument. Figure 2 displays the proportion of participants who agreed that thepost’s comment was accurate by the type of argument used in the post
and whether the post was ideologically aligned with the participants’ priorattitudes. Comparing the average accuracy ratings of aligned posts andunaligned posts for each argument type, we find strong support for18

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age

Figure 2. Ratings of post’s accuracy by ideological alignment and type of argument.
Note. Ninety-five percent confidence interval bars around the proportions for each group.

Hypothesis 1. On average, 67% of participants exposed to a post that alignedwith their prior political views characterized the post as accurate compared
to 39% of those who saw a post that did not align with their prior politicalperspective. Across all three types of arguments, there is a large and statistically significant difference (p \ .001 for a two-tail t test) between those
assigned to an ideologically aligned condition and those assigned to an
unaligned condition: For all three argument types, a majority of participants
assigned to an ideologically aligned post agreed that the statement was accurate while a majority of participants assigned to an unaligned post disagreed.16 Thus, consistent with prior research, directional motivation
appears to have a substantial effect on judgments of accuracy.
Accuracy Motivation and Judgments of Truth Claims
Comparing across the three different argument types in the ideologicallyaligned condition, we also find evidence of the influence of accuracy motivation as articulated in Hypothesis 2. Participants who saw an ideologicallyaligned post were less likely to rate the post as accurate if it contained misinformation. Fifty-eight percent of those who saw an ideologically aligned
post that contained misinformation (Groups C and F) agreed that the post
19

Kahne and Bowyer
was accurate compared to 74% who saw an aligned emotive post (Groups A
and D) and 69% of those who saw an aligned, evidence-based post (Groups
B and E). Both of these differences between the misinformative posts andthe two other conditions are statistically significant (p \ .001 for a two-tailt test of the difference between the evidence-based and misinformation conditions; p = .03 for a two-tail test of the difference between the emotivebased and misinformation conditions).17
Effects of Political Knowledge and Media Literacy Learning Opportunities on
Judgments of Truth Claims
Having demonstrated that directional motivation and accuracy motivation
appear to influence participants’ judgments of accuracy, on average, we turnto the third research question, which asks whether these effects of directional
motivation and accuracy motivation are conditional on factors that schools
can promote: political knowledge and exposure to media literacy education. The ordered logit regression models reported in Table 2 estimate
the effects of ideological alignment on accuracy ratings, with Model III providing the tests of whether directional motivation is conditional on politicalknowledge and media literacy learning. The results of Model III are supportive of Hypothesis 3’s prediction that directional motivation will havea greater influence on those participants with the most political knowledge.
Those with more knowledge are more likely than others to judge posts thatalign with their prior beliefs as accurate (regardless of the posts’ actual accuracy). The main effect of political knowledge is negative and statistically significant, indicating that in the ideologically unaligned conditions, greater
political knowledge is associated with a lower likelihood of agreeing thatthe comment is accurate. In addition, the interaction between being assigned
to an ideologically aligned post and political knowledge is positive and statistically significant, consistent with the hypothesis that the effects of directional
motivation are greatest among those with the most political knowledge.
These conditional effects are illustrated in Figure 3, which plots the predicted probability of agreeing that the comment is accurate by the participants’ level of political knowledge. This predicted probability is calculated
separately for those participants assigned to an ideologically aligned condition and those assigned to an unaligned condition, with all other variables
included in Model III held constant. Political knowledge clearly has a large
effect in the unaligned conditions. For an otherwise typical participant
assigned to view an unaligned post, the predicted probability of agreeingthat the comment is accurate declines from .47 for someone at the low
end of the political knowledge spectrum to .27 at the high end. In the ideologically aligned condition, however, the difference in probabilities acrossthe range of political knowledge is small (.60 at the low end to .68 andthe high end) and not statistically significant. Put differently, among those20

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
Table 2
Ordered Logit Models of Effects of Ideological Alignment on Judgments of Accuracy

Aligned post
Emotive-based post
Evidence-based post

Model I

Model II

Model III

1.19***(0.11)
0.32*(0.13)
0.27*(0.13)

1.20***(0.11)
0.32*(0.13)
0.27*(0.13)
20.29(0.15)

0.36(0.21)
0.35**(0.13)
0.28*(0.13)
20.86***(0.21)
1.18***(0.30)
20.11(0.21)
0.42(0.31)
20.01(0.11)
0.02(0.02)
0.68***(0.15)
0.06(0.17)
0.40**(0.15)
0.28(0.28)
0.03(0.19)
20.29(0.16)
20.24(0.16)
0.11(0.17)
20.11(0.16)
20.34*(0.16)
219.260.17
1,291

Political knowledge
Aligned Post 3 Political Knowledge
Media literacy

0.07(0.16)

Aligned Post 3 Media Literacy
Female
Age
Black
Asian
LatinoMultiple/other race
Foreign bornCollege degree
Metro area
MidwestSouth
West
Likelihood ratio
Nagelkerke R2
N

20.00(0.10)
0.02(0.02)
0.73***(0.15)
0.05(0.17)
0.42**(0.15)
0.33(0.28)
0.10(0.19)
20.34*(0.15)
20.23(0.16)
0.09(0.17)
20.12(0.15)
20.34*(0.16)
193.95
0.15
1,291

20.02
(0.11)
0.02(0.02)
0.67***(0.15)
0.04(0.17)
0.38*(0.15)
0.31(0.28)
0.09(0.19)
20.30(0.16)
20.21(0.16)
0.11(0.17)
20.10(0.15)
20.33*(0.16)
197.470.15
1,291

Note. Entries are ordered logit coefficients; standard errors in parentheses.
*p \ .05. **p \ .01. ***p \ .001 (two-tail t test).

21

Kahne and Bowyer

Figure 3. Accuracy ratings by ideological alignment and political knowledge.
Note. Predicted probabilities and 95% confidence intervals estimated from Model III.

with low levels of political knowledge, we see a modest difference between
the ideologically aligned and unaligned conditions (.60 and .47, respectively). By contrast, among those with high levels of knowledge, we seea large gap between the aligned and unaligned conditions (.68 to .27).
By contrast, the findings for Model III do not support Hypothesis 4.
Neither the estimated effect of media literacy nor the interaction effectbetween ideological alignment and media literacy are statistically significant.
This indicates that the effects of motivated reasoning are not conditional on
the amount of media literacy education that an individual received.18
Table 3 presents the results of the set of models that investigate whether
the influence of accuracy motivation on judgments of accuracy are conditional on individuals’ political knowledge and media literacy education.
Contrary to Hypothesis 5, individuals with high levels of political knowledge
do not appear to be influenced more by accuracy motivation than do otherparticipants. Even though those with more knowledge might be expected tohave greater capacity to recognize misinformation, having greater knowledge does not increase the likelihood of rating posts with misinformation
as inaccurate relative to the two other ideologically aligned posts. That is,22

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
while Model III indicates that the effect of directional motivation on judgments of accuracy is conditional on political knowledge, Model VI suggeststhat political knowledge does not affect the relative influence of accuracy
motivation.
By contrast, there is support for Hypothesis 6’s prediction that accuracy
motivation will have a greater influence on those individuals who reported
having had the most media literacy learning opportunities. Specifically,
there is a positive, statistically significant interaction effect between student
reports of media literacy learning and viewing an evidence-based post (relative to seeing a post with misinformation). For those participants whoreported receiving no media literacy training, there is no statistically significant difference across the three types of arguments employed in the posts.
The presence of misinformation in a post does not appear to affect their
judgments of the post’s accuracy. However, among those participants
who reported the most media literacy learning experiences, there is a large,
statistically significant difference in ratings of accuracy between those
exposed to a post that employed misinformation and those who saw anevidence-based post.19
Figure 4 illustrates the substantive significance of this interaction by plotting the predicted probability of agreeing that the post is accurate while varying
reports of media literacy training and the presence of misinformation, holding
constant political knowledge and all the control variables. Participants whoreported little media literacy education do not seem to make distinctions
between the posts based on the type of argument employed. If anything,
they are more likely to rate the (objectively false) post with misinformationas accurate (.60) than the evidence-based post (.48), though this difference is
not statistically significant. Conversely, those individuals who reported having
the most media literacy learning experiences appear to make a clear distinction
between the evidence-based posts and the posts with misinformation. For otherwise typical participants who reported having the maximum amount of media
learning opportunities, the predicted probability of saying that the post is accurate declines from .78 if they were assigned to an evidence-based post to .52 if
they saw a post with misinformation.

Discussion
The democratic process suffers when individuals are inattentive to or
unable to judge the factual accuracy of political content (Delli Carpini &Keeter, 1996). Acceptance and circulation of misinformation undermines
reasoned decision making and informed action while delegitimizing thepromise of deliberation. Moreover, increasing partisanship and dynamics
associated with political engagement in the Digital Age (e.g., the diminishedvetting of truth claims by gatekeepers and the prevalence of homophilous

23

Kahne and Bowyer
Table 3
Ordered Logit Models of Effects of Type of Argument on Judgments of
Accuracy—Respondents in Ideologically Aligned Conditions Only

Emotive-based post
Evidence-based post

Model IV

Model V

Model VI

0.48*
(0.19)
0.20(0.20)

0.49*(0.19)
0.22(0.20)
0.26(0.22)

20.11(0.41)
20.42(0.40)
0.07(0.43)
0.61(0.56)
20.14(0.56)
20.37(0.43)
0.58(0.57)
1.69**(0.60)
20.14(0.16)
0.03(0.02)
0.62**(0.23)
20.60*(0.26)
0.34(0.22)
0.15(0.40)
20.17(0.30)
0.06(0.22)
0.00(0.22)
20.05(0.25)
20.19(0.23)
20.18(0.24)
51.41
0.09
606

Political knowledge
Emotive-Based Post 3 Political Knowledge
Evidence-Based Post 3 Political Knowledge
Media literacy

0.36(0.24)

Emotive-Based Post 3 Media Literacy
Evidence-Based Post 3 Media Literacy
Female
Age
Black
Asian
LatinoMultiple/other race
Foreign bornCollege degree
Metro area
MidwestSouth
West
Likelihood ratio
Nagelkerke R2
N

20.16(0.16)
0.03(0.02)
0.49*(0.22)
20.53*(0.26)
0.26(0.22)
0.15(0.40)
20.10(0.30)
0.11(0.22)
0.03(0.22)
20.01(0.24)
20.13(0.23)
20.17(0.23)
36.65
0.06
606

20.13
(0.16)
0.03(0.02)
0.57*(0.23)
20.53*(0.26)
0.31(0.22)
0.15(0.40)
20.15(0.30)
0.02(0.22)
20.01(0.22)
20.05(0.24)
20.16(0.23)
20.17(0.23)
41.02
0.07
606

Note. Entries are ordered logit coefficients; standard errors in parentheses.
*p \ .05. **p \ .01 (two-tail t test).

24

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age

Figure 4. Accuracy ratings by argument type and media literacy learning
opportunities.
Note. Predicted probabilities and 95% confidence intervals estimated from Model VI.

online networks) have increased both exposure to misinformation and theneed to prepare youth to assess the accuracy of truth claims.
This study contributes to our understanding of how young people judge
the factual accuracy of partisan claims tied to controversial societal issues
and demonstrates clear reason for concern. To summarize, we found evidence that youth are guided by both directional motivation and accuracy
motivation when making such judgments. But we also found that the impactof alignment with one’s prior beliefs was greater than the impact of whether
a given statement is accurate. In addition, the study’s findings provide guidance regarding strategies that civic educators and others seeking to prepare
youth for engagement in a democratic society can use to respond to these
dynamics. In particular, we found that the influence of directional motivation
was greatest for those with the most political knowledge and that counter toour expectations, those with high levels of political knowledge were no
more likely than others to correctly identify inaccurate truth claims. The findings with respect to media literacy were exactly the reverse. Youth whoreported having media literacy learning opportunities were no more likely

25

Kahne and Bowyer
than others to be influenced by directional motivation but were significantly
more likely to be influenced by accuracy motivation. In the following, we
discuss the implications of these findings for those committed to promoting
the democratic aims of education.
Educators Must Respond to the Problems Resulting From
Directional Motivation
Consistent with prior research on directional motivation (Kunda, 1990;
Lodge & Taber, 2013) and as noted previously, we find strong evidence of
directional biases when young people are asked to evaluate the accuracyof a political claim. Even when presented with a grossly inaccurate statement, a clear majority of youth (58%) in the nationally representative YPP
survey agreed that the statement was accurate when those claims wereused to support perspectives that aligned with their ideological perspective.
In a media environment in which political misinformation circulates widely
and rapidly and in which individuals can easily seek out news and perspectives from sources that champion their beliefs, this psychological tendency
of individuals to accept claims that align with their beliefs as true, evenwhen the claims are not accurate, will undermine the quality and ultimate
productivity of democratic deliberation. Thus, it is important for educators
to identify ways to counteract the impact of directional motivation on judgments of partisan content.
Political Knowledge Is an Insufficient Support for Accurate Judgment
Contrary to conventional wisdom, this study also indicates that politicalknowledge is an insufficient support for accurate judgments of partisan
claims. Motivation is also of central importance. In particular, we find thatpolitical knowledge appears to magnify the impact of directional motivation.
Those youth who possess high levels of political knowledge are significantly
more likely than less knowledgeable youth to judge content as inaccurate
when that content does not align with their prior beliefs. As described by
Taber and Lodge (2006), individuals with greater political knowledge may
have an increased capacity to counterargue messages that contradict their
partisan leanings. Those with more political knowledge may also havegreater ability to recognize the political implications of varied posts andthus be better able to align their judgments of those posts with their priorbeliefs (Bowyer, Kahne, & Middaugh, in press).
On their own, the dynamics associated with knowledge are not necessarily problematic. Knowledge may enable youth to better align their beliefs
with their judgments. However, from the standpoint of preparing students
for political deliberation, political knowledge is insufficient. It does notlead youth to effectively attend to the factual accuracy of claims—only toa claim’s alignment with their beliefs. Highly knowledgeable participants
26

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
are just as likely as their less knowledgeable peers to accept an ideologicallyaligned post as accurate even when a post contains substantial falsehood.
Thus, although it is common for those discussing the democratic aims ofeducation to assume that promoting students’ political knowledge will
help youth make reasoned and accurate judgments related to pressing policy
issues, such knowledge does not appear to enhance the likelihood that individuals will identify misinformation in charged political contexts.
Media Literacy Education Is an Essential Support for Judgment in a Highly
Partisan Digital Age
In contrast to these findings regarding political knowledge, we wereheartened that media literacy learning experiences that aim to promote accurate judgment of truth claims appear to be helpful. Individuals who reported
high levels of media literacy learning opportunities were considerably more
likely to rate evidence-based posts as accurate than to rate posts containing
misinformation as accurate—even when both posts aligned with their priorpolicy perspectives. Those who reported no exposure to media literacy education, in contrast, were not more likely to rate posts with evidence-based
arguments as more accurate than posts that contained misinformation. We
believe this finding is important. It indicates that media literacy learning
opportunities that aim to promote accurate judgments of truth claims may
well advance a form of what Lavine et al. (2012) label critical loyalty.
Those with critical loyalty still hold strong values and beliefs, but they adopt
a critical stance when evaluating an argument—even when that argumentaligns with their partisan preferences.
Future Educational Research Must Conceptualize and Test SpecificEducational Responses to Motivated Reasoning so as to Enhance the Qualityof Political Judgment
While these findings provide a clear indication of the potential potencyof media literacy learning opportunities, much more work remains to be
done. Clearly, one limitation of our data is that we rely on self-reports ofreceiving media literacy learning opportunities, and we lack details on the
media literacy learning opportunities that students received. Studies of particular interventions (especially if structured as field experiments) would
enable direct measurement of what students received and would avoid thepotential biases associated with student reports of receiving media literacy.
Such an approach would also help to clarify the programmatic componentsof media literacy education that have the greatest impact on students’ will
and capacity to make accurate judgments. In addition, since both politicalknowledge and media literacy learning opportunities were not randomly
assigned in our survey experiment, we cannot rule out the possibility that
other, unobserved factors might explain the differences across participants
27

Kahne and Bowyer
in their judgments of accuracy.20 Again, structured experiments tied to particular interventions would be especially helpful in establishing the causal
impact of varied educational experiences.
More broadly, these findings highlight the potential payoff of educational responses to problematic dynamics related to motivated reasoning.
As Deanna Kuhn (2011) has written,
Although people may use argument in self-serving ways that they arein limited command of, it doesn’t follow that they cannot achieve
greater conscious command and come to draw on it in a way thatwill enhance their cognitive power. (p. 83)

When assessing exposure to media literacy, we asked youth if educators had
discussed how important it was to evaluate evidence that backs up opinions(emphasizing the norm of accuracy motivation) and if they had provided
skills (or capacities) that would help them judge the accuracy of information
they find online (emphasizing the need for skills). It would be wise to test
additional ways to promote the norm of accuracy motivation as well as
the skills or capacities to act productively in response to this motivation.
Indeed, media literacy, while a fruitful strategy to pursue, is but one waythat educators prepare students to care about and be able to assess truth
claims in policy arguments. Frequently, for example, teachers engage students in debates of controversial issues and have students write research
papers that examine controversial issues. In addition, scholars have studied
ways that differing classroom discussion practices and discussion goals (i.e.,
prioritizing convincing others vs. prioritizing reaching consensus) can foster
desired forms of argumentation (Felton, Garcia-Mila, Villarroel, & Gilabert,
2015; Kuhn & Crowell, 2011; Michaels, O’Connor, & Resnick, 2007). In
one study, Kuhn and Crowell (2011) found that curricula engaging students
in dialogues on social issues can increase the quality of argumentative reasoning, as exhibited in writing on topics that were not part of the curricularintervention (see also Hess & McAvoy, 2015). Fortunately, this priority aligns
with broad school reform agendas. The ability to assess the quality of truth
claims and arguments figures prominently in the Common Core State
Standards (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices &Council of Chief State School Officers, 2010) and the National Assessmentof Educational Progress (NAEP) Civics Test (National Center for Education
Statistics, 2015), for example.
In short, the general concern for preparing youth to judge the accuracyof truth claims, like the broader concern for the democratic purposes ofschooling, should not be confined to a single priority such as media literacy.
Rather, we believe these findings highlight dynamics worthy of study in multiple domains. Indeed, educators still have much to learn about whether andwhen varied curricular experiences are shaped by and may influence the28Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Ageprevalence and impact of accuracy and directional motivation in real-worldpolitical contexts. Moreover, our study focused on identification of one kindof misinformation. If educators are to prepare youth to judge the quality ofa policy argument, many qualities of political argument are worthy of attention (e.g., how partisan leanings influence assessments of whether an argument employs coherent reasoning).
The relationships between directional and accuracy motivation on the
one hand and a range of curricular practices and capacities for judgmenton the other deserve careful study. Such work can clarify the impact of varied approaches and deepen our conceptual understanding of ways to promote high-quality judgment of politically charged issues. These skills are
essential given the dramatic expansion of choice when it comes to news
media, the diminishing role of gatekeepers, and the widespread circulationof misinformation. Without the capacity for and the commitment to the accurate assessment of truth claims regarding controversial political issues, thelinks between rigorous thought and evidence on the one hand and democratic deliberation and informed policymaking on the other are severelycompromised. The emphasis educators place on knowledge and analytic
reasoning in non–politically charged contexts is not misplaced, but this focus
is insufficient if we are to fully prepare youth for democratic participation in
an increasingly partisan age.
Notes
1Participants are recruited to the Knowledge Panel through an address-based sampling method (prior to 2009, the panel was recruited through random digit dialing).
Among other procedures to ensure the representativeness of the Internet panel, GfK provides a laptop and free Internet access to households without home access to a computerconnected to the Internet. For a detailed description of the probability-based methods
used by GfK to construct and maintain a representative Internet panel, see http://
www.knowledgenetworks.com/ganp/reviewer-info.html.
2
The Youth Participatory Politics (YPP) Survey also included a small sample (N = 17)
that was drawn by contacting KP members who were African American and at least 55
years old. These panelists were asked if they had any grandchildren who were in the target group (African American and 15–17 years old), and if so, one eligible grandchild wasselected to complete the survey.
3
A small number of sampled households that did not respond to the invitations totake the online survey were administered the instrument by telephone. Because the survey experiment was only administered to those respondents who took the survey online,
these phone respondents (N = 129) are excluded from our analyses, as are participants
who took the Spanish language version of the survey (N = 123).
4
Due to the differential probability of selection, the survey data must be weighted inorder to be representative of the national population. However, since the primary concernof this article is with the comparisons across experimental groups, most of the analyses
here are not weighted. In those instances where statistics are used to draw inferences
about the national population, the appropriate survey weights are applied. Full detailsof the YPP survey and the sampling procedures are available on the authors’ website(http://ypp.dmlcentral.net/projects/youth-participatory-politics-survey-project).
5
Items in the survey experiment, with its follow-up questions, as well as the questions
on media literacy learning experiences were piloted with 12 youth from two high schools

29Kahne and Bowyer
and one college in the Bay Area. The group was diverse in terms of age, political perspective, race, and academic performance. We asked the students to think aloud as theyanswered these questions and to give examples of media literacy learning opportunities
they had in school to confirm that they were answering the question in a manner consistent with the purpose of the items.
6
A further 200 participants were assigned to a control group that was not exposed toany of the posts. Consequently, this group is not included in any of the analyses.
7
We use the term ideology rather narrowly throughout this article to refer to positions
on the government’s role in economic redistribution.
8
Contra the assertion seen by Group C that 90% of the rich do not pay any taxes, IRS
data indicate that of the 1,097,879 households that reported an adjustable gross income ofat least $500,000 in 2012, only 1,843 (0.17%) paid no federal taxes. The statement seen byGroup F that 90% of taxes are paid by 1% of Americans is similarly contradicted by datafrom the Congressional Budget Office (2014): Taxpayers in the top 1% of the pre-tax
income distribution paid 24% of all federal income taxes in 2011. Moreover, since sales
taxes and social security and state and local income taxes are generally less progressive
than federal income taxes, the overall percentage of taxes paid by the top 1% are likely
even lower, although the percentages vary by state.
9
Unfortunately, we made a problematic oversight in this section of the survey. At theend of the experiment, we did not explain to survey respondents that we had given themmisinformation. Thus, we may have led some survey respondents to believe factually inaccurate content related to economic inequality. We thank an anonymous reviewer for alerting us to this risk and regret that we did not debrief the participants in our study regarding
the accuracy of the content to which they were exposed. We will do this in the future. We
also strongly encourage researchers conducting similar studies to anticipate the need tocorrect any misinformation that participants receive.
10
This question is drawn from the General Social Survey, which has used this measureof attitudes about economic inequality since the late 1970s.
11
The three items included in the YPP survey asked respondents to identify whichparty held the majority in the House of Representatives, which institution is responsible
for judicial review, and which party is considered more conservative. The prior wave
(2011) of the YPP survey included the same three items plus two additional items asking
about the majority required for Congress to overturn a presidential veto and which office
Joe Biden held. Among the 2011 respondents, the full five-item scale of political knowledge is strongly correlated (r = .92) with the three-item scale used in the 2013 survey.
Thus, we are confident that the three-item scale used here is a reliable measure of politicalknowledge.
12
The wording of these questions varied according to whether the respondent
attended a school or college during the 2012–2013 academic year. Participants who
were enrolled in high school or college were asked about their classes in that school
year. Those who were not enrolled were asked to ‘‘[think] back to the last school you
attended.’’13
For participants assigned to an ideologically unaligned post, accuracy motivationand directional motivation never come into conflict since none of the comments is objectively accurate.
14
Randomization checks confirm that there were no statistically significant differences
across the groups in questions relating to economic policy or other political attitudes
administered in the survey prior to the exposure to the experimental treatment.
15
In particular, we control for participants’ gender, age, race, ethnicity, country ofbirth, education (whether they possess a college degree), region of residence, and metropolitan status. We include these as controls because we assume that they are causally prior
to both political knowledge and media literacy learning opportunities.
16
This same pattern of results holds when we analyze those in the liberal conditions(A–C) separately from those in the conservative conditions (D–F). Liberal participants
assigned to a liberal condition are more likely to rate the post as accurate than are liberals
assigned to a conservative condition, whereas conservatives are more likely to rate thepost as accurate if they were assigned to a conservative condition.

30

Educating for Democracy in a Partisan Age
17

The difference in means between the evidence- and emotive-based posts, for which
we have no theoretical expectations, is not statistically significant (p = .22 for a two-tail ttest).
18
To further test whether the effects of motivated reasoning are conditional on media
literacy learning, we also tested a model specification that included a three-way interaction between ideological alignment, media literacy learning, and political knowledge.
This interaction was not statistically significant.
19
Because our measure of media literacy learning relies on respondents’ self-reports
and since a large portion of our sample was no longer in high school at the time of thesurvey, there could be concern that these results were driven by the responses of participants who had been out of school for several years. In order to rule out this possibility,
we repeated this analysis using only the data for those respondents who were still enrolled
in middle school or high school and found the substantive conclusions for Model VI
remained the same. In particular, the interaction effect between media literacy learningand the evidence-based condition (relative to the misinformation condition) was positiveand statistically significant.
20
For example, it is possible that those with more knowledge are more interested in
the topic and that they might feel more strongly about the issue and thus be subject toa greater degree of directional motivation. To test this particular alternative explanation,
we employed a survey question that asked participants’ how important the issues income
inequality and taxes were to them. Adding this variable, as well as its interaction with theexperimental conditions, did not substantively change the results of Models III and VI
regarding the effects of political knowledge and media literacy learning opportunities.
These results are available from authors upon request.

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Manuscript received February 24, 2016
Final revision received August 18, 2016
Accepted October 4, 201634