How Citizens Integrate Information without Ideological Cues: Local Weather and Americans' Beliefs about Global Warming.

Much of the recent research on mass public opinion has focused on identifying how messages with ideological cues affect individuals' attitudes regarding politics. But citizens also receive politically relevant information—including facts about the state of the world and their own personal experiences—that does not come with an ideological label attached. Who uses this information, and to what extent? It is difficult to explore these questions using observational data, because individuals may be exposed to such information in a selective fashion, and self-reports of exposure may not be reliable. In this study, we identify one piece of information that is devoid of ideological content and to which Americans are exposed at random—their local weather—and show that it leads a significant share of the public to reassess its beliefs about the evidence for global warming. This effect is much stronger for the less educated and those with weak partisan ties, and virtually non-existent for the most educated and most partisan citizens. Our results suggest that when politically relevant information is conveyed without ideological cues, political sophistication may prohibit the integration of this information into political beliefs regardless of the direction of one's predispositions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]