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The uncovering of several recent corporate scandals has brought to light unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) in organizations. A growing body of research has provided insights into employees’ UPB and its antecedents. However, our understanding of leader UPB and its effects remains limited. In this study, we develop and test a theoretical model that explains employees’ responses to their leader UPB. By drawing on the theory of motivated reasoning and the trust literature, we posit that, in general, leader UPB is linked to unfavorable responses from employees such as a lower perception of leaders’ trustworthiness, which, in turn, reduces the citizenship behaviors of employees. However, our model also shows that these effects do not emerge automatically but depend on a crucial boundary condition—followers’ outcome favorability, or the extent to which followers personally benefit from leader UPB. Specifically, we contend that negative responses to leader UPB arise mainly when followers’ outcome favorability is low but decrease significantly when followers’ outcome favorability is high. The results of two multi-wave, multi-source field studies support our hypothesized model. These findings offer a new, instrumental perspective on followers’ responses to unethical leader behaviors, with valuable theoretical and practical implications.

A voluminous literature documents that citizens' perceptions of democracy are shaped by electoral victories and defeats, but what reasoning do citizens use to evaluate parties as winners or losers? Drawing on research on partisan-motivated reasoning, I propose an own-party bias in winner–loser evaluations according to which voters evaluate the electoral fate of their party more favourably than that of other parties. Data gathered in the aftermath of the Danish parliamentary election in 2015 support this expectation. Citizens are more inclined to interpret the election outcome as successful for their preferred party, regardless of the actual election result. This is more pronounced the stronger their partisan attachment and among the less politically knowledgeable, who also assign less importance to objective indicators of electoral success. The findings have implications for our understanding of electoral winners and losers and of how electoral results shape party support and polarization.

Populist supporters have been found to take cues from populist incumbents. Yet, little is known about how they incorporate party cues in their political beliefs when populists are in office. This research note argues that (1) citizens who identify with populist parties engage in partisan motivated reasoning – that is, they are driven by the desire to be consistent with their partisan allegiances – and that (2) they engage in partisan motivated reasoning more intensely than their non-populist counterparts because populist party cues strongly prompt them to process biased information. Drawing on data from the European Social Survey, it is evidenced that populist supporters express much warmer economic views when their parties hold power. Warm economic views are also found to increase significantly more in accordance with strength of partisanship and exposure to political information for populist supporters than for non-populist supporters when their respective parties govern. Results highlight a mechanism by which populist incumbents are likely to remain attractive despite their poor economic record. They have implications for our understanding of the mainstreaming of populist parties in Europe.

This paper explores the psychology of conflict of interest by investigating how conflicting interests affect both public statements and private judgments. The results suggest that judgments are easily influenced by affiliation with interested partisans, and that this influence extends to judgments made with clear incentives for objectivity. The consistency we observe between public and private judgments indicates that participants believed their biased assessments. Our results suggest that the psychology of conflict of interest is at odds with the way economists and policy makers routinely think about the problem. We conclude by exploring implications of this finding for professional conduct and public policy.

Political misperceptions can distort public debate and undermine people's ability to form meaningful opinions. Why do people often hold these false or unsupported beliefs, and why is it sometimes so difficult to convince them otherwise? We argue that political misperceptions are typically rooted in directionally motivated reasoning, which limits the effectiveness of corrective information about controversial issues and political figures. We discuss factors known to affect the prevalence of directionally motivated reasoning and assess strategies for accurately measuring misperceptions in surveys. Finally, we address the normative implications of misperceptions for democracy and suggest important topics for future research.

Given the potential political and social significance of conspiracy beliefs, a substantial and growing body of work examines the individual-level correlates of belief in conspiracy theories and general conspiratorial predispositions. However, although we know much about the psychological antecedents of conspiracy endorsement, we know less about the individual-level political causes of these prevalent and consequential beliefs. Our work draws from the extant literature to posit that endorsement of conspiracy theories is a motivated process that serves both ideological and psychological needs. In doing so, we develop a theory that identifies a particular type of person—one who is both highly knowledgeable about politics and lacking in trust—who is most susceptible to ideologically motivated conspiracy endorsement. Further, we demonstrate that the moderators of belief in conspiracy theories are strikingly different for conservatives and liberals.

By proposing a dual-perspective model of attitude formation related to Chinese products, the survey of 592 adults investigated how Americans’ evaluation and purchase intention of Chinese products can be influenced by China’s image driven by a synergy of US politics and mass media. Younger people and minorities had better evaluation of and more intention to purchase Chinese products. A better country image of China contributed to more positive products beliefs and stronger purchase intention. Republicans engaged in partisan-motivated reasoning in their purchase intention, while Democrats converged with nonpartisan audiences. More social media use resulted in stronger purchase intention, while partisan media failed to make an impact on product beliefs and purchase intention. The findings suggested that although Americans’ judgment and purchase intention of Chinese products is affected by individual’s preexisting perception of China, only Republicans are prone to partisan-motivated reasoning of Chinese products. Social media use could lead to more acceptance of Chinese products, but conservative and liberal media seem to make little impact on this matter.

Scholars often evaluate citizens' democratic competence by focusing on their ability to get relevant facts right. In this article, I show why this approach can yield misleading conclusions about citizen competence. I argue that although citizens with strong partisan loyalties might be forced to accept the same facts, they find alternative ways to rationalize reality. One such way, I show, is through the selective attribution of credit and blame. With four randomized experiments, conducted in diverse national settings and containing closed- as well as open-ended questions, I find that as partisans correctly updated economic beliefs to reflect new facts, they conversely attributed responsibility in a highly selective fashion. Although partisans might acknowledge the same facts, they are apt in seizing on and producing attributional arguments that fit their preferred worldviews.

Do partisan disagreements over politically relevant facts, and preferences for the information sources from which to obtain them, represent genuine differences of opinion or insincere cheerleading? The answer to this question is crucial for understanding the scope of partisan polarization. We test between these alternatives with experiments that offer incentives for correct survey responses and allow respondents to search for information before answering each question. We find that partisan cheerleading inflates divides in factual information, but only modestly. Incentives have no impact on partisan divides in information search; these divides are no different from those that occur outside the survey context when we examine web-browsing data from the same respondents. Overall, our findings support the motivated reasoning interpretation of misinformation; partisans seek out information with congenial slant and sincerely adopt inaccurate beliefs that cast their party in a favorable light.

A large literature demonstrates that conservatives have greater needs for certainty than liberals. This suggests an asymmetry hypothesis: Conservatives are less open to new information that conflicts with their political identity and, in turn, political accountability will be lower on the right than the left. However, recent work suggests that liberals and conservatives are equally prone to politically motivated reasoning (PMR). The present article confronts this puzzle. First, we identify significant limitations of extant studies evaluating the asymmetry hypothesis and deploy two national survey experiments to address them. Second, we provide the first direct test of the key theoretical claim underpinning the asymmetry hypothesis: epistemic needs for certainty promote PMR. We find little evidence for the asymmetry hypothesis. Importantly, however, we also find no evidence that epistemic needs promote PMR. That is, although conservatives report greater needs for certainty than liberals, these needs are not a major source of political bias.