The Effects of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Protest Attitudes
Partisan bias is a pervasive source of prejudice within the United States, and previous literature in political psychology has found that party allegiance creates a perceptual screen which biases individual judgement. Specifically, partisan motivated reasoning leads individuals to rate their in-party members positively and out-party members negatively. I find additional support for partisan motivated reasoning through an online experiment in which partisans are given a hypothetical protest to judge. Although describing a protest as peaceful, I find that partisans judge protests by their party rivals as more violent than their own. Furthermore, partisans rate in-party protests positively and out-party protests negatively. Party identification's effect on protest attitudes has profound implications for collective action as well as illiberal attitudes toward the freedom of speech.