Informed or Overwhelmed? Disentangling the Effects of Cognitive Ability and Information on Public Opinion

Abstract Received wisdom in political science holds that informed citizens are better able to develop coherent, stable policy preferences. However, past research fails to differentiate between the effects of information and cognitive ability. I show that, for people with low levels of ability, consuming more political information predicts lower levels of ideological constraint and response stability. This effect is driven by relatively technical issues, suggesting that attempts to inform the electorate may backfire by overwhelming some voters. More broadly, these results suggest that an increasingly saturated information environment may exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, differences in political sophistication.