Gullible Public, Cunning Executives, or Negligent Media? A Theory of Misperceptions.

This paper offers a theoretical and empirical analysis of false beliefs related to Iraq, defined as an individual’s response to a survey question, which is contrary to all available evidence. This paper contends previous research has failed to distinguish the uninformed from the misinformed and have not fully integrated the combination of institutional and individual factors that contribute to misperception formation and maintenance. This paper proposes a synthesized theory that explains how institutional factors, such as information provided by executive branch and the media interact with individual factors, such as individuals’ tendency to engage in politically motivated reasoning, news consumption habits, level of political sophistication, and strength of party identification influence false beliefs related to Iraq. Previous research by Kull, Ramsey, and Lewis (2003) has suggested Iraq related misperceptions would wane as new information became available and as time passed from the war. I use March 2006 PIPA/KN survey data to examine whether false beliefs related to Iraq have decreased at the aggregate level and use logistic analysis and chi-square statistics to examine individual level factors that influence false beliefs. In doing so, I demonstrate whether increased attention to news about Iraq decreases false beliefs and to whom increased attention matters. Finally, I demonstrate the importance of false beliefs by revealing their strong relationship with support for the Iraq War. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]