Effects of Unresolved Factual Disputes

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Journal of Communication ISSN 0021-9916

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Effects of Unresolved Factual Disputesin the News on Epistemic Political EfcacyRaymond J. Pingree

School of Communication, The Ohio State University, 3016 Derby Hall, 154 N Oval Mall, Columbus,OH 43210, USA

This experiment tests effects of passive, neutral reporting of contradictory factual claimson audiences. Exposure to such reporting is found to affect a new self-efcacy construct developed in this study called epistemic political efcacy (EPE), which taps condence inones own ability to determine truth in politics. Measurement of EPE is found to be reliableand valid, and effects of neutral reporting on it are found to be conditional on prior interest in the issues under dispute. Implications of this effect and of EPE are discussed. Self-efcacy theory (Bandura, 1982) suggests these short-term effects may accumulate over time. EPE mayaffect outcomes related to politicalunderstanding, opinion formation, and informationseeking.

doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01525.x

Many have criticized modern journalism for playing too passive a role in factualdisputes (Cunningham, 2003; Durham, 1998; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003; Rosen,1993; Streckfuss, 1990). As a result of a number of factors, but most importantly newsroom cost-cutting, faster news cycles, and fear of going out on a limb,mainstream American journalism has become drastically more passive over the pastfew decades (Anderson, 2004; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003; McChesney, 1999, 2004;Patterson, 2000; Plasser, 2005). Although the proliferation of news outlets createsthe appearance that journalism is thriving, fewer reporter-hours are devoted to eachstory, leaving less time for journalists to do their homework (Jamieson & Waldman,2003). As a result, journalists often resort to he said/she said reporting, in whicheven when two sides make directly contradictory claims about a veriable factualquestion, the reporter leaves it as an exercise for the reader to do the additionalhomework necessary to resolve the dispute (e.g., reading the text of a bill, checkingtranscripts or recordings of a speech, and questioning an expert or an eyewitness).

One alarming possible consequence of such reporting is a trend toward increasedlevels of factual disagreement across party lines, with factual belief differences

Corresponding author: Raymond J. Pingree; e-mail: [email protected]

22 Journal of Communication 61 (2011) 2247 2011 International Communication Association


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R. J. Pingree Epistemic Political Efcacy

perhaps even replacing inherently subjective value differences as the primary basis of partisan polarization (Shapiro & Bloch-Elkon, 2008). Shapiro and Bloch-Elkon pointout that this has consequences for the health of a democracy because it indicatesincorrect factual beliefs among partisans on one side or the other. However, effectsof passive journalism may not be limited to the partisan faithful or to specicincorrect beliefs. It would be perfectly understandable for someone caught betweentwo rapidly diverging partisan versions of reality to disengage from politics outof a profound sense of inefcacy about what to believe. This article develops andvalidates a measure of this feeling of inefcacy about political truth, while alsotesting effects of passive versus active journalism on it. The self-efcacy constructdeveloped here, epistemic political efcacy (EPE), is a form of condence in onesown ability to determine the truth about factual aspects of politics. Althoughpolitical efcacy is condence in ones ability to affect politics, EPE is a form of

condence in ones ability to understand it. As such, this construct may be a missingcommunication counterpart to one of the most widely useful constructs in politicalscience, promising to improve our understanding of information seeking, opinionformation,political learning, and otherunderstanding-oriented citizen behaviors andcognitions.

Along with this novel dependent variable, also thought to be of potential utility to communication researchers is the novel independent variable in this study, whichis whether a news story actively adjudicates factual disputes or passively reports a hesaid/she said story. There has been almost no research on how this affects audiences.Despite urgent alarms about the decline or even the death of journalism as an

effective watchdog over government and more generally as a guardian of honesty andaccuracy in our national discussion (e.g., Nichols & McChesney, 2009), research hastold us little about how the resulting changes in the content of news stories actually affects audiences. This study aims to pave the way for more research into theseeffects, demonstrating how journalistic adjudication can be a tractable experimentalmanipulation by isolating it from balance, story length, and the number of factspresented. Past work is mostly theoretical or content analytic and tends not to eventheorize possible psychological consequences for audience members in any depth,framing the problem instead as a failure to keep political elites honest. A partialexception comes from research on science and health reporting, in which many have pointed out how balanced journalism can allow corporations to manufactureuncertainty about questions such as the health consequences of smoking or the link between human activity and climate change (for a review see Michaels & Monforton,2005).This research hasfocused on specicuncertainty about theparticular questionsunder dispute, and the concept of manufacturing uncertainty is usually thought of as limited to realms of expert knowledge. This study extends this concept in two key directions: into the realm of everyday political facts that ordinary journalists shouldbe able to check for themselves and beyond specic uncertainty about any particularfacts under dispute to a broader, generalized sense of political uncertainty (epistemicpolitical inefcacy).

Journal of Communication 61 (2011) 22 47 2011 International Communication Association 23


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Epistemic Political Efcacy R. J. Pingree

Journalistic adjudicationAccording to many critics, the crucial test of journalism is when sources makecontradictory factual claims; in these moments, passive journalists stop at reportingthe opposing claims when they should, as Jamieson and Waldman (2003) put it,adjudicate factual disputes. This adjudication is not a radical or novel proposalforeign to reporters habits; it comes down to the extent to which they do theirhomework by checking facts, looking for additional sources, and doing their ownanalysis. There is no limit to the amount of such homework that can be done onany given story, and there is no guarantee that it will resolve important factualdisputes between sources. Ideally, journalists would decide how much adjudicationa dispute merits based on a careful and open-minded assessment of its importanceand resolvability. However, there are of course limits to journalists time to work onany given story. Particularly in forms of journalism in which time is very limited such

as 24-hour cable news and also in general as a consequence of modern journalismsunderstaffed newsrooms and fast news cycles (Anderson, 2004; Bantz, McCorkle,& Baade, 1980; Fishman, 1988; Jamieson & Waldman, 2003), there is a large andgrowing gap between actual and ideal levels of adjudication.

Furthermore, for various other nonideal reasons, some journalists may shy away from adjudication even when it requires little effort. One such reason is that thereis an alternative denition of objectivity rooted in a very different view of the roleof journalism in society (Streckfuss, 1990). In this view, objectivity is equated withneutrality. The ideal of neutrality means the journalist should never take a side inany dispute. This often contradicts the original denition of journalistic objectivity,

which dictates that the journalist should always take a side in a factual dispute whenan overwhelming weight of evidence supports that side, regardless of whether it isthe side the journalist was predisposed to favor (Streckfuss, 1990). The two ideals canresult in identical reporting, but only on disputes that are either inherently subjectiveor for whatever reason difcult to achieve a reasonable threshold of certainty about.The test of which ideal a journalist is striving for is when easily available evidencestrongly supports one side of the dispute and not the other. In such cases, anindividual journalists own belief in the ideal of neutrality is only one of severalfactors that may cause a journalist to remain neutral. A journalist might also fear thatthe audience, editors, or others within the news organization would judge objectivity based on the balance of the end product, not the apparent fairness and depth of the news gathering process that produced it. In other words, the choice betweendenitions and practices of objectivity may often be a strategic one to minimize risk to the reporter or news organization (Tuchman, 1972).

This is not to say that journalists never adjudicate factual disputes or that alldisputes could be resolved cleanly by journalistic adjudication. Some journalists domake the effort some of the time, and some disputes are either inherently subjectiveor complex enough that it would be unreasonable to expect journalistic resolution.However, in cases when these legitimate reasons for a lack of adjudication donot apply, the factors discussed above tend to prevent journalists from seeking or



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includingadjudicating content. Takentogether, thesefactors provide sufcientreasonto suspect that modern journalism supplies lower than ideal levels of adjudication.Although the critique here rests on a comparison of current journalism to an idealand not on comparisons to any past era, others have argued that recent decades haveseen a precipitous decline in various resources and norms that allow and encourageindividual reporters to adjudicate factual disputes and more generally to producehigh-quality journalism (e.g., Anderson, 2004; McChesney, 1999, 2004; Patterson,2000; Plasser, 2005).

Adjudication and indexing A closely related critique of modern journalism comes from the indexing hypothesis,which posits that journalism indexes the range of views it presents on the rangeof views that exist within mainstream government debate (Bennett, 1990). As a

result, if opposing elites do not speak out against a policy, reporting on it tends tobe one sided, failing to represent a broader range of stable and reasonable publicopinion or even expert opinion. Like the critique of neutrality, indexing is at hearta critique of journalistic norms of balanced reporting. Both critiques are related tobalance-oriented journalism being ultimately too elite-driven and lacking its ownvoice in public debate. Indexing makes for imbalanced news when there is a lack of balance in elite discourse. In contrast, insufcient adjudication is a way in which journalism can function poorly even when it produces balanced news stories.

The normative standard Bennett advocates is applicable to coverage of theinherently subjective side of politics, but to treat it as a broad normative theory of

the ideal role of the press in a democracy would implicitly assert that this realm of opinion is the entirety of politics, taking the radically relativist epistemic position thatthere are no political facts, and that therefore the only politically neutral normativestandard is the breadth of the range of opinions presented. The two critiques are bestseen as complementary. Neither really aims for nor achieves a complete normativeframework for the evaluation of all journalism. Just as Bennetts (1990) theory only explains the ideal role of journalism with regard to covering the subjective side of politics, the critique motivating this study is limited to coverage of its factual aspects.

Epistemic political efcacy and related conceptsThis study examines the question of whether adjudication affects audience membersEPE, which is condence in ones own ability to determine the truth about factualpolitical disputes. Note that this conceptualization does not require accepting any extreme epistemic claims about absolute truth, but it does require rejecting theopposite, relativist extreme that all knowledge is equally uncertain. In the abovedenition, determine the truth is meant as plain English for achieve a reasonablethreshold of certainty. This conceptualization also does not assume that all politicalquestions are entirely objective. Of course, there are important subjective aspects tonearly all political issues. However, a glance at almost any policy news story is enoughto demonstrate the absurdity of the claim that politics is entirely subjective. Choosing



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among government policies is simply not like choosing among avors of ice cream.Policy questions quite frequently center on facts, and political disputes can and oftendo hinge on these facts, not only on subjective matters. The focus here is on thesefactual aspects of political issues. Therefore, in more precise terms, epistemic politicalefcacy is ones condence in ones own ability to achieve a reasonable threshold of certainty about the factual aspects of politics.

In contrast to political efcacy, which is a form of condence related to politicalparticipation, epistemic political efcacy is primarily related to information seekingand opinion formation. This section will distinguish EPE from related conceptsincluding self-efcacy, political efcacy, media trust, and need for closure.

Self-efcacy The concept of political efcacy developed separately from self-efcacy theory butcan and should be grounded in it. Self-efcacy theory posits that the motivation toperform any task operates in combination with an efcacy construct specic to thattask (Bandura, 1982; Gist & Mitchell, 1992). In other words, people do not just try to do what they want to do but what they want to do that they also believe they cansucceed at. Self-efcacy should not be measured as a general construct unrelated to aparticular type of task because such a construct would be indistinguishable from self-esteem (Brockner, 1988). If one can distinguish two types of tasks that are affected by twodistinct types ofmotivation, they canalso have twodistinct self-efcacy constructs(Brockner, 1988; Gist & Mitchell, 1992). In the case of political efcacy, the behaviorsand motivations associated with political action are distinct (at least conceptually)from those associated with political opinion formation and information seeking, andtherefore, political efcacy may have a previously unmeasured epistemic counterpart.Self-efcacy theory is also useful for understanding how EPE is constructed over time.Like any efcacy construct, the primary determinant is enactive mastery, whichis an accumulation of personal successes or failures at the task, with greater weightgiven to more recent ones (Bandura, 1982). By making it easier for the reader todecide the truth of particular claims, journalistic adjudication may affect subsequentlevels of EPE, both in the short term via greater weight of recent experiences and inthe long term by accumulation of condence.

Political efcacy Political efcacy refers to a feeling of condence in ones ability to participateeffectively in the democratic process (Easton & Dennis, 1967; Niemi, Craig, & Mattei,1991; Morrell, 2003). In predicting participation, it has been useful to distinguishbetween two forms of political efcacy: internal and external. The best combinationfor participation is high internal efcacy, meaning high condence in ones owneffectiveness at political participation, combined with low external efcacy, meaninga perception that the system is generally unresponsive to citizen participation (Craig,1979).Although political efcacy is conceptualized as related to politicalparticipationand is most often studied in the context of such outcomes, its measures almost alwaysinclude items with a strong epistemic dimension (e.g., I feel I have a pretty good



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understanding of politics). Improving our ability to empirically distinguish betweencondence in an ability to affect politics, and condence in an ability to understandit seems particularly applicable to research focused on communication, informationseeking, or opinion formation (e.g., Gastil, Black, Deess, & Leighter, 2008; Kenski &Stroud, 2006; Lee, 2006; Morrell, 2005; Pinkleton & Austin, 2001; Pinkleton, Austin,& Fortman, 1998; Shah & Scheufele, 2006; Wells & Dudash, 2007).

Although the partly epistemic items in standard internal efcacy scales of coursefactor well together with the other internal efcacy items, some recent researchhas attempted to reconceptualize this subset of items on face validity grounds aspolitical information efcacy (Kaid, McKinney, & Tedesco, 2007; Kaid, Postelnicu,Landreville, Yun, & LeGrange, 2007; Sweetser & Kaid, 2008). It remains to be seenwhether measures of this construct can be developed that are clearly distinct fromeither internal efcacy or self-reported political knowledge. In any case, conceptually,political information efcacy is clearly distinct from EPE in that it is condencein the sufciency of the political information one already has for voting and otherparticipation, instead of condence in an ability to evaluate the accuracy of politicalclaims. As such, political information efcacy seems more theoretically relevant forthe same participatory outcomes as internal political efcacy and less so for thecommunication, opinion-formation, and information-seeking outcomes that EPEaims to shed light on.

Media trust EPE is also conceptually related to media trust. However, this relationship may becomplex. Although high trust in media may make some have higher EPE becausetrusted media is helpful for determining truth, low trust in media may be relatedto habits of independent verication, which produce very high EPE. Even with thislatter point aside, distrust in media is not the only possible source of low EPEforinstance, one might think that the media does a good job but that the problem is withthe inherent complexity of political issues or with the clever dishonesty of politicians.

Need for closureKruglanski (1989) identies the need for closure as the desire to arrive at a conclusionto avoid uncertainty and contains two relevant subdimensions: a dislike of ambiguity and close-mindedness.Certain individuals,motivated by ambiguity reduction, have aparticularly strong desire to make decisions to achieve closure about events regardlessof whether they have all the necessary facts. Although it is conceivable that suchindividuals would feel higher EPE, individuals can have high epistemic condencewithout necessarily possessing a high need for closure. As the need for closure andits subdimensions are epistemic motivations, they are conceptually distinct from any epistemic efcacy construct and particularly from EPE.

The pilot study A study,which will hereafterbe referred to as the pilot study, found that for those withhigh prior interest in the issues involved in the factual disputes,adjudication increased



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EPE (Pingree, Brossard, & McLeod, 2006). However, the same study also found theopposite effect for those with low prior interest. For these readers, adjudicationactually reduced EPE, instead of increasing it to a lesser extent as originally expected.This may have been an artifact of this studys balanced adjudication in whichtwo sides dispute two different factual matters and each side is contradicted onone of the disputes. A story in which both sides are shown to be dishonest may frustrate low-interest readers who seek a cue about which side to trust. This study aims to address this and other limitations of the pilot study, such as the fact that thenonadjudication condition was a shorter story, and therefore adjudication was notstrictly isolated from length or the number of facts presented.

Apart from these limitations of the experimental design, the pilot study was alsonot entirely satisfactory in its measurement of EPE in two ways. First, EPE was notdistinguished sufciently from existing political efcacy constructs. External political

efcacy was not measured, and a factor analysis failed to separate internal politicalefcacy measures from EPE measures. A second validity concern is whether EPEitems really tap condence in open-minded efforts to discover the truth, as opposedto condence derived from a closed-minded belief that one already knows the truth.Constructs such as dogmatism and closed-mindedness were not measured, leavingopen the possibility that EPE may simply be a proxy for those constructs, largely reversing its normative implications.

Possible outcomes of epistemic political efcacy There are several possible serious consequences of pervasive low levels of citizen

EPE for the health of a democracy. Four of these will be discussed here to providemotivation for the present study and suggest directions for future research into theconsequences of low levels of EPE.

Citizen competence and information seeking Citizen competence has been a major theme of recent research in political science,with many lamenting low levels of attention to and knowledge about politics (e.g.,Bennett, 2003; Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Kuklinski & Quirk, 2001). Theoreticalworkon the roots of this problem typically reliesona modelpositing three ingredientsfor learning: ability, opportunity (information exposure or availability), and mostcrucially, interest (Luskin, 1990). Political interest is crucial in this explanationbecause it is thought to lead to information seeking, attention, and reection, amongother behaviors and cognitions that lead to learning. But because interest is alsodifcult to inuence, this perspective seems to offer little hope for interventionsto improve citizen competence among the uninterested (e.g., Delli Carpini, 2000).However, since political interest is a motivational construct, according to self-efcacy theory, it affects behavior in combination with a related efcacy construct. Low levelsof EPE may help explain why some citizens who are interested in political issuesnevertheless choose to remain uninformed, potentially offering an overlooked andtractable approach for interventions to improve citizen competence. Furthermore,



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because formal education may increase EPE(perhaps via a more general, nonpoliticalepistemic efcacy construct that should be developed in future work), EPE may alsooffer a missing link in explaining the importance of formal education above andbeyond its more obvious relationships to knowledge and cognitive ability (e.g., Dee,2004; Hillygus, 2005; Jerit, Barabas, & Bolsen, 2006).

Stealth democracy beliefsAnother response to the same problem of low citizen competence is to argue thatcitizens choose not to become competent because they want stealth democracy(Hibbing & Theiss-Morse, 2002). Specically, as the argument goes, they wantexperts to run government, instead of politicians or the people. Hibbing and Theiss-Morse argue that stealth democracy is what the people want, implying that it isundemocratic to give them anything else. They effectively assert such beliefs are xed,true preferences. However, these responses could also be due to frustration withpolitics as it currently exists (or as it is currently reported). Specically, low levelsof EPE may make people more likely to say they agree with stealth democracy belief measures.

Openness to reasonOpenness to reason is a willingness to change ones mind in the face of a goodargument against a prior political belief. Openness to reason is a crucial citizenquality in theories of deliberative democracy (Delli Carpini, Cook, & Jacobs, 2004)and is also a central reason deliberative democracy is often seen as Utopian by thosewho see such open-mindedness as rare in politics. This critique assumes that beingclosed against reasons that counter ones political views is a stable trait or even auniversal fact of human nature. However, it may be at least in part a function of EPE.Without condence that reasoning about politics might help one approach truth,there is less incentive to engage open-mindedly with the reasoning of others.

Acceptance of dishonesty Fourth and nal is an acceptance of dishonesty. Low levels of EPE may not just makepeople tune out of politics, but may make them tune in in ways that disregard truth,such as a willingness to accept dishonesty by ones own side in a political dispute.Low levels of EPE might lead to this simply because when truth seems harder todetermine, dishonesty may lose weight as a factor in ones overall assessment of apolitician due to increased uncertainty about whether he or she is being dishonestin any given case. In an extreme manifestation of low EPE as a belief that there isno such thing as a political fact, the entire concept of political dishonesty becomesmeaningless, making dishonesty by political elites entirely acceptable.

Hypotheses

First, as discussed above, a central goal of this study is to further develop and validatethe EPE scale. As such, rst are a set of hypotheses about EPEs expected correlations



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with the conceptually related orientations discussed above. First, because it is aform of political efcacy, EPE is expected to be positively correlated to both otherforms of political efcacy. And because mediated information is often importantfor resolving factual political claims, media trust is also expected to be positively correlated with EPE.

H1: EPE will be positively related to (a) internal political efcacy, (b) external politicalefcacy, and (c) media trust.

As discussed above, a competing interpretation of any measure of EPE may be thatit taps a form of close-mindedness or dogmatism. It is important to test this because itimplies opposite normative implications to those intended by the conceptualizationof EPE outlined above, indicating a form of condence resulting from prejudgmentof truth instead of condence in an ability to open-mindedly determine the truth.

H2: EPE will be positively related to (a) close mindedness and (b) dogmatism.

Regardless of EPEs zero-order relationships with its related orientations ashypothesized above, the crucial test of its utility is whether it adds any explanatory power above andbeyondthe role of those related orientations in predictingoutcomes.Four outcome variables were chosen because they are theorized (above) as potentiallong-term effects of EPE. These were information seeking, acceptance of dishonesty,stealth democracy, and openness to reason.

H3: EPE will add a unique positive contribution to predicting (a) information seeking and(b) openness to reason, above and beyond EPE-related orientations and general politicalorientations.

H4: EPE will add a unique negative contribution to predicting (a) acceptance of dishonesty and (b) stealth democracy beliefs, above and beyond EPE-related orientations and generalpolitical orientations.

Adjudication, issue interest, and epistemic political efcacy An interaction between adjudication and issue interest is expected in predictingepistemic political efcacy. To the extent that issue interest serves as an accuracy motivation, it creates a context in which EPE is likely to be accessed and updatedbased on the success or failure of the attempt to decide which opposing claim ismore accurate. Other predispositions such as general political interest, need forcognition (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982; Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984), or need forclosure (Kruglanski, Weber, & Klem, 1993) may in some cases also produce accuracy motivation. However, in the context of a typical news story with a variety of information a reader could focus on (e.g., the personalities, strategies, or conicts of politics) interest in the issues directly under factual dispute seems the best predictorof an effort to mentally resolve those disputes. Other more general predispositionsmight just as well lead a reader to focus on other aspects of the story. The presenceof adjudication should therefore increase EPE for readers who are interested in



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the particular issues under dispute, whereas it may perhaps even decrease EPE forlow-interest readers (as found by the pilot study).

H5: Adjudication will interact with prior issue interest in predicting EPE such that the effect

of adjudication on EPE will be more positive for readers with high issue interest than forreaders with low issue interest.

Recall that the pilot study found a reduction in EPE for low-interest readers ina study using balanced adjudication, meaning a pair of factual disputes in whicheach side was contradicted about one of the disputes. This may have resulted fromthe desire among low-interest readers for a cue about which side to trust. If thisis the case, balanced (as opposed to imbalanced) adjudication should reduce EPEfor low-interest readers, whereas for readers with high interest in the issues underdispute, balanced adjudication should increase EPE because it reassures the reader

that the journalist is unbiased.H6: Balanced adjudication, compared with imbalanced adjudication, will interact with prior

issue interest in predicting EPE such that the effect of balance on EPE will be more positivefor readers with high issue interest than for readers with low issue interest.

Methods

ParticipantsThe data were collected by means of an experiment embedded in a Web-based

survey of undergraduate students at a large university in the Midwestern UnitedStates ( N = 538). Respondents were offered extra credit for participating and werecontacted with an e-mail which provided the Web address of the survey. The study took place over a 2-week period in the spring of 2008.

Design and procedureThe experiment dealt with the issue of health care and consisted of both pre- andpostmanipulation survey items. Unless otherwisenoted, all items used 11-point scalesranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. After answering pretest questions,respondents were presented with a two-page sequence of experimental stimuli. Therst page contained an expression expectation manipulation, not used in theseanalyses (but included as a covariate), that led subjects either to expect or not toexpect to have to explain the story in their own words.

On the following page, respondents encountered one of four versions of actional Associated Press news brief about a ctional bill under debate in the houseof representatives. Which of the four versions of the story subjects received was alsorandomly assigned, resulting in an overall eight-cell design. As shown in Appendix A, all four versions of the story were identical in their rst three and their nal twoparagraphs, which introduce the bill, provide background on the importance of theissue, and also set up two factual disputes about the bill. In one dispute, opponents



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of the bill claim that its cost will be far higher than the estimated $200 million, andin the other, opponents claim that it is redundant with Medicaid and will createunnecessary additional bureaucracy. Two versions of the news story then adjudicatethis factual dispute and two versions do not.

Therst nonadjudicationstory is comparable with thenonadjudicationconditionfrom the pilot study because it does not include any additional text in place of theadjudication. It is therefore labeled the shorter nonadjudication story. The secondnonadjudication story, the nonadjudicating facts story, contains additional facts sothat the story lengthand amountofinformation are asclose aspossible tothe two adju-dication stories. The rst adjudication story is comparable with the sole adjudicationconditionusedinthepilotstudybecauseitresolvesthetwofactualdisputesinoppositedirections, creating a balanced adjudicationstory.Whichofthetwoclaims byoppo-nents of the bill was supported was randomly determined, and dummies for whethereach claim is supported (cost supported and novelty supported) are included inall experimental analyses. The second adjudication story was an imbalanced adju-dication story, containing the exact same adjudication text but with both disputesresolved in favor of the same side. Which side they favored was also randomly deter-mined and stored in the same cost supported and novelty supported dummies.

Issue importanceIn addition to the news story adjudicationand expression expectation manipulations,the analyses examined one additional independent variableinterest in the issue of health care. Prior to reading the news story, respondents were asked to rate, on an11-point scale, how important a set of political issues were to them. The health careissue interest scale (Cronbachs = . 845, M = 7. 10, SD = 1. 95) was constructedfrom three items: Health insurance for low-income Americans, The high cost of prescription drugs, and Health care in general.

General political orientationsFor control purposes, several general political orientations measured in the pretestwere included in some of the analyses. Political interest ( M = 5. 34, SD = 2. 68) wasmeasured using a single item that asked respondents to rate how interested are youin politics, generally speaking on an 11-point scale ranging from not at all interested to very interested . Political knowledge ( M = 4. 92, SD = 2. 32) was measured by asingle item that asked respondents to rate how knowledgeable are youabout politicalissues on an 11-point scale ranging from not at all to very . Ideological direction( M = 3. 86, SD = 2. 15) and its folded version for ideological strength ( M = 2. 00,SD = 1. 38) were based on an item asking where would you place yourself on thepolitical spectrum on an 11-point scale from very liberal to very conservative.

Political efcacy Epistemic political efcacy Epistemic political efcacy (Cronbachs = . 753, M = 5. 68, SD = 1. 68) was mea-sured using three items: I feel condent that I can nd the truth about political



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issues, if I wanted to, I could gure out the facts behind most political disputes,and there are objective facts behind most political disputes, and if you try hardenough you can nd them.

Internal political efcacy On face validity, certain traditional measures of internal political efcacy appearto imply an epistemic dimension. Because of this, this study introduces two novelinternal political efcacy items intended to tap the efcacy of political action withouttapping the epistemic or external dimensions. These are given the opportunity, Ifeel that I could do a good job inuencing public ofcials and to the extent thatcitizens can inuence politics, my efforts to do so would be more effective thanthe average person. In addition to these two items, two traditional internal efcacy items were used to construct the internal political efcacy scale (Cronbachs = . 859, M = 4. 54, SD = 2. 02). These were I consider myself well qualied to participatein politics and I feel that I could do as good a job in public ofce as most otherpeople.

External political efcacy Externalpoliticalefcacy(Cronbachs = . 782, M = 5. 45, SD = 1. 64)wasmeasuredwith four items: People like me dont have any say about what the governmentdoes (reverse coded), I dont think public ofcials care much what people likeme think (reverse coded), Ordinary people can inuence the government, andPublic ofcials care what ordinary people think.

EPE-related orientationsThis section describes other measures with some conceptual similarity to EPE,included in this study for the purposes of assessing the validity of the EPE scale.

Media trust Media trust (Cronbachs = . 633, M = 4. 25, SD = 1. 47) was measured using threeitems: In general, mainstream media can be trusted, Journalists often know toolittle about the subjects they cover (reverse coded), and Most of the informationprovided by the mainstream media is incomplete (reverse coded).

DogmatismThe three dogmatism items had low reliability as a scale (Cronbachs = . 333),so each item was used individually. Dogmatism: anticompromise ( M = 3. 73,SD = 1. 88) was To compromise with ones political opponents is dangerousbecause it usually leads to the betrayal of ones side. Dogmatism: ignore the public( M = 4. 30, SD = 2. 40) was Our leaders should do what they think is best even if itis not what the public wants. Finally, dogmatism: for or against truth ( M = 3. 17,SD = 2. 42) was There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are for thetruth and those who are against the truth.



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Within this interaction, the positive effects of adjudication on high-interest readersare signicant but the negative effects on low-interest readers are not.

Validity of epistemic political efcacy Zero-order correlations between EPE and related orientations are presented inTable 1. Correlations with related orientations generally support its validity. Aspredicted by H1a through H1c, EPE is positively correlated with internal politicalefcacy (r = . 433, p < . 01), positively correlated with external political efcacy (r = . 235, p < . 01), and positively correlated with media trust ( r = . 124, p < . 05).Hypotheses 2a and 2b were derived from a competing interpretation of EPEmeasuresin which they indicate condence in a close-minded prejudgment of truth insteadof condence in the ability to determine it. First, EPE was not positively relatedto close-mindedness ( r = . 218), so H2a is not supported. Results for H2b were

mixed, with one of the three measures of dogmatism negatively correlated to EPE,one unrelated, and one weakly positively correlated. Overall, there is little support

Table 1 Factor Analysis on Three Forms of Political Efcacy

Political Efcacy

Epistemic Internal External

I feel condent that I can nd the truth about politicalissues

.755 .240 .098

If I wanted to, I could gure out the facts behind mostpolitical disputes .784 .268 .092

There are objective facts behind most political disputes,and if you try hard enough you can nd them

.836 .048 .080

I consider myself well qualied to participate in politics .221 .792 .147I feel that I could do as good a job in public ofce as

most other people.185 .840 .025

Given the right opportunity, I feel that I could do a good job inuencing public ofcials

.178 .820 .164

To the extent that citizens can inuence politics, my efforts to do so would be more effective than theaverage person

.068 .833 .013

People like me dont have any say about what thegovernment does

.034 .023 .781

I dont think public ofcials care much what people likeme think

.042 .051 .791

Ordinary people can inuence the government .185 .178 .728Public ofcials care what ordinary people think .157 .064 .779

Extraction method: principal component analysisRotation method: Varimax with Kaiser normalizationRotation converged in four iterations



15/26


for the alternative interpretation of EPE as condence in dogmatic or close-mindedprejudgment of truth.

Of the correlations with EPE in the rst column of Table 2, only internal politicalefcacy is strongly correlated enough to warrant any concern that EPE items may tapthe same underlying construct. A factor analysis containing all items for the threeforms of political efcacy is shown in Table 2. Results show a fairly clean separationof the three scales into three corresponding factors. Two EPE items are weakly crossloaded with internal political efcacy at .240 and .268, a major improvement fromthe pilot study but still not a perfect separation. Also note that the new internalpolitical efcacy items performed well. In fact, the best-performing measure of internal political efcacy was one of the new items: To the extent that citizenscan inuence politics, my efforts to do so would be more effective than the averageperson. Overall, factor analysis suggests that the EPE items are distinct from items

measuring its closest conceptual cousins.Turning now to EPEs performance as a scale, perhaps the central validity question is whether EPE adds any utility in predicting outcomes above and beyondinternal efcacy and the other EPE-related orientations, as predicted by Hypotheses 3and 4. To address this question, four ordinary least squares regression modelswere run, one for each of the four outcome variables. Each model included EPE,all its related orientations, three general political orientations (political knowledge,political interest, and ideological direction), and all experimental factors. Beforepresenting these results, it is important to note that although similar models could becentral results in a representative sample study to assess EPEs unique contribution to

predicting these democratically consequential outcomes in the population, given thepresent sample they are used here only for validation of the EPE construct, with thecentral result instead being the experimental effects discussed further below on EPE.

In the model predicting information seeking, EPE was a signicant and positivepredictor ( = . 107, one-tailed p = . 008), as predicted by H3a. Neither internalpoliticalefcacynorexternalpoliticalefcacywere signicant predictors. In themodelpredicting openness to reasoning, EPEs coefcient was in the direction predicted by H3b but was not signicant ( = . 058, one-tailed p = . 108). In the model predictingacceptance of dishonesty, EPE was a signicant and negative predictor ( = . 09,one-tailed p = . 031), as predicted by H4a. Note also that in this model, in contrast toEPE, internal political efcacy was one of the strongest positive predictors ( = . 210, p = . 001), whereas external political efcacy was nonsignicant. In the modelpredicting the leave it to experts stealth democracy belief, EPE was a signicant andnegative predictor ( = . 178, one-tailed p = . 0001), as predicted by H4b. Internalpolitical efcacy was a positive predictor in this same model but was not signicant( = . 104, p = . 107). Because these two surprising positive relationships for internalpolitical efcacy are in the opposite direction from the EPE coefcients in the samemodels, they might perhaps have been artifacts of removing the substantial varianceshared by EPE and internal political efcacy. However, when EPE was removed fromthese models, internal political efcacy remained signicantly and positively related



16/26


T a

b l e 2

Z e r o - O r d e r C o r r e

l a t i o n s

E p i s t e m i c

E f c a c y

I n t e r n a l

E f c a c y

E x t e r n a

l

E f c a c y

M e d i a

T r u s t

D i s l i k e

A m

b i g u i t y

C l o s e

-

M i n d e d

A n t i c o m p r o m i s e

F o r / A g a i n s t

T r u t h

I g n o r e

P u b

l i c

E p i s t e m i c p o

l i t i c a l e f

c a c y

( E P E ) r e

l a t e d

E p i s t e m i c e f

c a c y

1

. 4 3 3

. 2 3 5

. 1 2 4

. 0

1 2

. 2

1 8

. 1

0 8

. 0

3 1

. 0 8 9

I n t e r n a l e f

c a c y

. 4 3 3

1

. 1 9 0

. 0

0 3

. 0

9 4

. 1

9 1

. 1

0 9

. 0

1 4

. 0 9 0

E x t e r n a l e f

c a c y

. 2 3 5

. 1 9 0

1

. 1 4 9

. 1

2 1

. 1

1 9

. 1

7 2

. 1

6 1

. 1 2 8

M e d i a t r u s t

. 1 2 4

. 0

0 3

. 1 4 9

1

. 0

0 5

. 0 9 4

. 0

0 1

. 0

7 2

. 1 3 3

D i s l i k e o f a m

b i g u i t y

. 0

1 2

. 0

9 4

. 1

2 1

. 0

0 5

1

. 1

0 1

. 1 1 0

. 1 7 7

. 0 4 5

C l o s e m i n d e d n e s s

. 2

1 8

. 1

9 1

. 1

1 9

. 0 9 4

. 1

0 1

1

. 1 0 4

. 0 7 6

. 0

1 1

A n t i c o m p r o m i s e

. 1

0 8

. 1

0 9

. 1

7 2

. 0

0 1

. 1 1 0

. 1 0 4

1

. 3 0 5

. 0 2 7

F o r / a g a i n s t t r u t h

. 0

3 1

. 0

1 4

. 1

6 1

. 0

7 2

. 1 7 7

. 0 7 6

. 3 0 5

1

. 1 1 5

I g n o r e p u

b l i c

. 0 8 9

. 0 9 0

. 1 2 8

. 1 3 3

. 0 4 5

. 0

1 1

. 0 2 7

. 1 1 5

1

G e n e r a l o r i e n t a t i o n s

C o n s e r v a t i v e

. 0

1 7

. 0

7 9

. 0 9 1

. 0 3 9

. 1 3 1

. 0 8 8

. 0

1 5

. 0 7

. 2 3 4

I d e o

l o g i c a

l s t r e n g t

h

. 1 2 4

. 1 8 9

. 0 4 2

. 0

0 3

. 0

7 7

. 0

0 2

. 0 2 8

. 0

3

. 0

5 1

P o l i t i c a l i n t e r e s t

. 3 7 7

. 6 7 7

. 1 6 7

. 0

3 4

. 0 0 5

. 2

6 7

. 0

7 5

. 0

2 3

. 0 3 5

P o l i t i c a l

k n o w

l e d g e

. 3 9 9

. 7 3 2

. 1 4 1

. 0 1

. 0

2 9

. 2

3 1

. 0

6 4

. 0 2 9

. 0 7 7

O u t c o m e s

I n f o s e e k

l i k e l i h o o

d

. 2 9 4

. 3 9 2

. 1 2 6

. 0

3

. 0

6 4

. 2

3 2

. 0 4 2

. 0 5

. 0

0 9

A c c e p t d i s h o n e s t y

. 0

7

. 0 8 6

. 0

4 3

. 0 9 7

. 1

9 5

. 1 4 9

. 1 5 9

. 0 9 0

. 0 5 6

L e a v e i t t o e x p e r t s

. 2

2 2

. 0

6 9

. 2

1 7

. 1

3 6

. 0

4 1

. 0 4 5

. 1 6 6

. 1 0 0

. 0 8

O p e n n e s s t o r e a s o n

. 1 3 1

. 0 5 7

. 1 4 9

. 0

5 8

. 0 9 2

. 2

9 7

. 2

5 7

. 1

1 2

. 0 5 4

N o t e : C e l

l e n t r i e s a r e P e a r s o n c o r r e l a t i o n c o e f

c i e n t s . C o e

f c i e n t s i n b o l d d i f f e r s i g n i c a n t

l y ( p

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