Why Does Corrective Information Have a Muted Effect on Immigration Attitudes? Motivated Reasoning and Shifting Goalposts

Several studies have attempted to test whether corrective information may counter the negative attitudes formed due to negative media portrayals of immigrants and immigration. In this manuscript, we report an original information-provision survey experiment where we provide corrective information about Mexican-immigrant welfare use to US research subjects. Consistent with prior studies, we find a muted effect on immigration attitudes. We advance the literature by presenting suggestive evidence that research subjects engage in motivated reasoning to reconcile new information with their a priori immigration attitudes. This suggests that, when provided corrective information about immigrants that is incongruent with their preexisting misperceptions, individuals will shift their beliefs about acceptable immigrant characteristics. By moving the goalposts, these individuals can avoid having to update their a priori attitudes. This suggests that corrective-information experiments have a mostly muted effect on immigration attitudes because research subjects reinterpret new information to justify existing attitudes.