Knowledge Persists, Opinions Drift: Learning and Opinion Change in a Three-Wave Panel Experiment

• Author: Michael G. Miller,Conor M. Dowling,Michael Henderson
• Date: 01 March 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19832543
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X19832543

American Politics Research

2020, Vol. 48(2) 263 –274

© The Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X19832543

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Article

In general, theories of representative democracy demand that

citizens bring at least a modicum of knowledge about public

affairs to their political decisions (e.g., Dahl, 1989). Decades

of public opinion research, however, highlight a clear problem

for normative theory: The public often simply does not know

the facts about political topics (Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996)

or even has inaccurate factual beliefs; that is, people may

believe things to be true that are actually false (Kuklinski,

Quirk, Jerit, Schwieder, & Rich, 2000; Kuklinski, Quirk,

Schwieder, & Rich, 1998; Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2003;

Nyhan & Reifler, 2010). There is considerable evidence that

being uninformed or misinformed about specific policy topics

matters for opinions on those topics. For example, experimen-

tal studies show that accurate information shapes opposition to

foreign aid and support for prison spending (Gilens, 2001),

attitudes toward immigrants (Barabas & Jerit, 2010), support

for teacher pay raises (Schueler & West, 2016), and support

for the estate tax (Sides, 2016). Observational studies similarly

show that the belief that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) estab-

lished “death panels” correlates with opposition to the law

(Pasek, Sood, & Krosnick, 2015), lack of knowledge about the

2001 federal income tax cuts inflated their support (Bartels,

2008), and beliefs about which demographic groups make up

the largest share of welfare beneficiaries correlate with atti-

tudes toward these programs (Gilens, 1999). In short, people

with accurate factual beliefs about policy often demonstrate a

willingness to make different choices than those who have

inaccurate (or no) factual beliefs about a given topic.

Scholarly attention has increasingly focused on whether

providing accurate policy information causes individuals to

update their factual beliefs and opinions about the topic.

However, this research has mostly focused on immediate

effects (e.g., Garrett, Nisbet, & Lynch, 2013; Gilens, 2001;

Hart & Nisbet, 2012; Kuklinski et al., 2000; Nyhan & Reifler,

2010; Schueler & West, 2016; Sides, 2016; Thorson, 2016;

Wood & Porter, 2018). Much less is known about whether the

provision of information—in particular, factual information

related to policy matters—can lead to enduring effects. For

exposure to information designed to educate individuals

about public policies to “work,” the effects should persist

over a period of time. An emerging literature (e.g., Berinsky,

2017; Swire, Berinsky, Lewandowsky, & Ecker, 2017) has

examined the persistence of informational effects on factual

beliefs, but few previous studies have considered whether

information affects factual beliefs and opinion differently,

especially over a period of time extending several weeks

beyond treatment. It is therefore imperative to further explore

the linkages between information, factual beliefs, and opinion

832543APRXXX10.1177/1532673X19832543American Politics ResearchDowling et al.

research-article2019

1The University of Mississippi, University, MS, USA

2Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

3Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Michael Henderson, Louisiana State University, Journalism Building, Baton

Rouge, LA 70803, USA.

Email: mbhende1@lsu.edu

Knowledge Persists, Opinions Drift:

Learning and Opinion Change in a

Three-Wave Panel Experiment

Conor M. Dowling1, Michael Henderson2,

and Michael G. Miller3

Abstract

Considerable evidence exists that Americans possess not only low levels of political knowledge but also relatively uninformed—

and sometimes misinformed—opinions on policy matters. Many recent studies focus on whether informational treatments have

immediate effects on citizens’ factual beliefs and opinions about policy, but less is known about whether such treatments have

enduring effects. Using a three-wave panel experiment, we assess the immediate and enduring effects of factual information

provision on factual beliefs and opinion of the Affordable Care Act. We find a relatively persistent effect of information

provision on accuracy of factual beliefs, but only an ephemeral shift in opinion, which typically drifts back to its pretreatment

state within a few weeks. Our findings have implications for the understanding of citizen learning and opinion change, as well as

ongoing scholarly debates about how long-lasting the effects of (experimental) interventions are.

Keywords

political knowledge, public opinion, survey experiment, learning, opinion change