The motivated reasoning paradigm states that ideological beliefs and goals bias individuals’ information processing particularly regarding socio-political information. However, most individuals are unaware of the potential that ideological biases shape their perception and judgement making them easy targets for political polarization and disinformation. This leads to the strong need to identify pivotal junctures to address and mitigate this bias. Utilizing an ideological bias task that assesses the degree of expressing one’s ideological bias in the estimation of evidence-based socio-political facts, we test the effects of two of feedback conditions on the reduction of ideological bias. For this purpose, a 3 between-factor (feedback-only vs. feedback + social norm nudge vs. no feedback control) design is used to test a representative German sample at two time points (Nt1 = 1229 , Nt2 = 1001). Participants who received feedback on the extent of their ideological bias displayed a significant bias reduction between t1 and t2 compared to the control group. An additional social norm nudge emphasizing the value of unbiased decision-making for society, did not result in a stronger reduction of ideological bias. Moreover, general bias awareness did not moderate the effect of feedback on bias reduction. Our findings contribute to a growing understanding about the suggestibility of ideological bias and point to the (limited) potential of bias awareness in mitigating biased information processing.
Motivated reasoning posits that ideological beliefs and goals bias individuals' information processing particularly regarding socio-political information. However, most individuals are unaware that ideological bias shapes their perception and judgment making them easy targets for political polarization. This leads to the strong need to address and mitigate this bias. Utilizing an ideological bias task that assesses the degree of expressing one's ideological bias in the estimation of socio-political facts, we test the effects of feedback on the reduction of ideological bias. With a three between-factor design (feedback-only vs. feedback + social norm nudge vs. no feedback control), we test a representative German sample at two time points (Nt1 = 1229, Nt2 = 1001). Participants who received feedback on the extent of their ideological bias displayed a significant bias reduction between t1 and t2 compared to the control group. An additional social norm nudge emphasizing the societal value of unbiased decision-making did not result in a stronger reduction of ideological bias. Moreover, general bias awareness did not moderate the effect of feedback on bias reduction. Our findings contribute to a growing understanding about the suggestibility of ideological bias and illuminate the (limited) potential of bias awareness in mitigating biased information processing.