Framing, Motivated Reasoning, and Opinions about Emergent Technologies

Abstract

How do individuals form opinions about new technologies? What role does factual information play in that process? We address these questions by incorporating two critical dynamics, typically ignored in extant work: competition between information and over-time processes. We present results from experiments on two technologies: carbon-nanotubes and genetically modified foods. We find that factual information is of limited utility—it does not have a greater impact than other background factors (e.g. values), it adds little power to newly provided arguments/frames (e.g., compared to arguments that lack factual information), and it is perceived in biased ways once individuals form clear initial opinions (e.g., there is motivated reasoning). Not only do our results provide insight into how individuals form opinions, over time, when presented with novel technologies, but they also bring together various distinct literatures including work on information, framing and motivated reasoning.

Keywords: framing, motivated reasoning, public opinion