Replication Data for: Correcting Bias in Perceptions of Public Opinion Among American Elected Officials: Results from Two Field Experiments

While concerns about the public’s receptivity to factual information are widespread, much less attention has been paid to the factual receptivity, or lack thereof, of elected officials. Recent survey research has made clear that U.S. legislators and legislative staff systematically misperceive their constituents’ opinions on salient public policies. We report results from two field experiments designed to correct misperceptions of sitting U.S. legislators. The legisla- tors (n=2,346) were invited to access a dashboard of constituent opinion generated using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Despite extensive outreach efforts, only 11% accessed the information in Study 1 and only 2.3% did so in Study 2. More troubling for democratic norms, legislators who accessed constituent opinion data were no more accurate at perceiving their constituents’ opinions. Our findings underscore the challenges confronting efforts to improve the accuracy of elected officials’ perceptions and suggest that elected officials may resist factual information.

尽管公众对事实信息的接受度相关担忧已普遍存在，但针对民选官员的事实信息接受度（或反之）的研究却寥寥无几。近期的调查研究明确显示，美国国会议员及立法工作人员会系统性地误判其选民对于热点公共政策的看法。本研究报告了两项旨在纠正现任美国国会议员认知偏差的现场实验结果。研究邀请了2346名国会议员，访问基于2016年国会合作选举研究（Cooperative Congressional Election Study）生成的选民意见数据仪表盘。尽管开展了广泛的推广工作，研究1中仅有11%的议员访问了该信息，研究2中这一比例仅为2.3%。更不利于民主规范的是，那些访问了选民意见数据的议员，其对选民意见的感知准确度并未得到提升。本研究结果凸显了提升民选官员认知准确度工作所面临的重重挑战，并表明民选官员可能会抵触事实性信息。