The madness of misperceptions: evaluating the ways anger contributes to misinformed beliefs

Abstract

Drawing from established theoretical traditions in cognitive consistency, motivated reasoning, heuristic–systematic processing, and the anger-activism model, we extend existing work linking anger with misperceptions by specifying three distinct ways anger might contribute to the formation of misperceptions: Increasing reliance on partisan heuristics, influencing political information-seeking behavior, and moderating the influence of partisan media exposure. Analyzing data from an original survey administered nationally via Qualtrics Panels during the first impeachment trial of President Donald Trump in January 2020, results indicate that high-anger partisans were more likely to express belief in claims supportive of their party and critical of the other party, regardless of the veracity of those claims. Further, anger was also linked with greater use of pro-attitudinal information sources and avoidance of counterattitudinal sources, with these differences in partisan media consumption subsequently influencing factual beliefs. However, we found no evidence that anger moderated the relationship between partisan media exposure and factual beliefs. We explore the implications of these findings in a political era defined increasingly by the experience of anger.