Replication Data for: The effect of incentives on motivated numeracy amidst COVID-19

How does political ideology affect the processing of information incongruent with one’s worldview? The disagreement in prior research about this question lies in how one’s ideology interacts with cognitive ability to shape motivated numeracy, or the tendency to misinterpret data to confirm one’s prior beliefs. Our study conceptually replicates and extends Kahan et al. (2017) by testing whether monetary incentives for accuracy lessen motivated reasoning when high- and low-numeracy partisans interpret data about mask mandates and COVID-19 cases. This research leverages the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, as Americans are polarized along party lines regarding an appropriate government response to the pandemic.

政治意识形态如何影响个体对与其世界观相悖的信息的加工处理？既往针对该问题的研究存在分歧，核心在于意识形态如何与认知能力交互，进而塑造动机性数理推理（motivated numeracy）——即个体为确证既有信念而误读数据的倾向。本研究从概念层面重复并拓展了Kahan等人（2017）的研究，通过检验当高、低数理能力的党派人士解读有关口罩强制令与新冠确诊病例的数据时，以提升准确性为目标的货币激励是否会削弱动机性推理。本研究依托仍在持续的新冠疫情危机开展，因美国民众在政府应对此次疫情的恰当方式上沿党派路线存在明显极化分歧。