Partisanship, Political Support, and Information Processing Among President Rodrigo Duterte’s Supporters and Non-Supporters

Abstract

This study investigates whether partisanship influences the cognitive processing of statements made by President Rodrigo Duterte. It adopts a pre-test/post-test design and involves 254 college students from Metro Cebu and Metro Manila Philippines. Findings suggest that partisanship significantly influenced the cognitive processing of statements attributed to President Duterte. Political support was significantly and positively associated with belief. Supporters were more likely to express belief in attributed statements. Even when informed that the statements were false, their political support did not significantly decline. Non-supporters were less likely to believe attributed statements and more likely to change their minds when shown information that the statements were false. “Motivated reasoning” or “expressive responding” may explain these findings but there is not enough data in this study to establish this. The implication is that fact-checking may have a limited impact on changing the minds or diminishing the political support of the strongly partisan.