Partisan bias: a mental distortion that leads to partisanship

In the context of politics, a committed member of a political party is known as a “partisan”, “partisan” or “partisan”. In this sense, partisan bias or partisan bias is the tendency to prefer the proposals of some parties or political actors to the detriment of others, considering more our affinity with the party than the content of said proposals.

All of the above occurs through an identification process that leads us to take certain positions, and in which different elements are involved that studies on partisan bias have allowed us to know. In this article we will see what this is about.

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What is partisan or partisan bias?

It is assumed that when we assume an inclination or position with respect to a party, it is because we have prioritized and even analyzed in depth their political proposals, regardless of the affinity that the party itself generate.

The partisan bias shows us that, in reality, the opposite phenomenon usually occurs: even if we do not realize it, we tend to be guided more by our identification with the party, and not so much by its political proposals, when we assume a position determined. Evidently this

ends up being decisive when developing opinions and making decisions in political activity.

In fact, scientific research in this context is abundant and has shown how partisanship has an important influence on attitudes and behaviors, both individual and collectives.

On the other hand, studies on partisan bias have also observed how this bias It tends to sneak into the media and the information they transmit, benefiting some parties to the detriment of others, especially during electoral campaign periods.

But how is it that partisan bias is generated? Do some people manifest it and others don't? Does identification with the party, and our political position, occur through a purely rational mechanism? Or, are they mediated by an affective and emotional dimension? We will see below some proposals to answer these questions.

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Identification and partisanship: how is this bias generated?

As we have said, studies on partisan or partisan bias have shown how people tend to sympathize with the proposals of the parties with which we most identify, regardless of the content of the proposal itself.

This identification refers to the process through which we recognize in the values promoted by a party our own values, desires, interests, expectations, life stories, etc. That is, the general preferences of a voter are combined with the general positions of a party, which implies an affective orientation of the individual towards it.

Research on partisan bias suggests that this stems from attempts to defend a highly valued group identity. In other words, this bias is generated as a psychological mechanism to reduce the anguish of disagreeing with a group to which we feel an important emotional attachment. The latter is what finally generates the motivation to follow the line or position of the party, and leave the content of your policy in the background.

As with other group identifications, this process is established from the most early in our life and from the significant changes that occur in our environment near.

Thus, we tend to approve a priori the policies of a party or candidate, even without the need to carry out an in-depth analysis of these nor a process of cross-checking with the policies of other candidates or matches.

In the same sense, we tend to discard, also a priori, the proposals of the opposing parties without having reviewed them in depth. All this since it allows us to reduce the cognitive effort that would imply finding ourselves in opposition; it is preferable to take whatever position the party we prefer takes.

A study on affective orientation

In a study on physiological responses related to partisan bias, Michael Bang, Ann Giessing, and Jesper Nielsen (2015) analyze the participation of the affective dimension in the process of identification with a political party in population Danish. 27 men and 31 women between 19 and 35 years old participated, many of them affiliated with both center-left and center-right political parties.

In a laboratory they measured the changes that occurred in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system (linked to the emotional and affective activity) of the participants, before the visual presentation of logos of different parties. They also used partisan cues such as advertising sponsors and specific political proposals.

Subsequently, the participants were questioned to determine whether they actually agreed with the proposals from the parties to which they were affiliated, or to which they showed affinity without necessarily being affiliates. In this they found that there was greater approval of political proposals when participants were affiliated.

On the other hand, when analyzing the reactions of the sympathetic nervous system to the presented stimuli, they found that the bias Partisan was only manifested in people who exhibited a strong physiological reaction during exposure to sponsors advertising. From this it is concluded that there is a very important affective component in the identification with the parties, which finally generates a partisan bias.

Bibliographic references:

• Bang, M., Giessing, A. and Nielsen, J. (2015). Physiological responses and partisan bies: beyond self-reported measures of party identification, 10 (5): DOI: 10.1371 / journal.pone.0126922.
• Bullock, J., Gerber, A., Hill, S. and Huber, G. (2013). Partisan bias in factual beliefs about politics. NBER: Massachusetts.
• Echeverría, M. (2017). Partisan bias in the news media. A methodological critique and proposal. Communication and Society, 30: 217-238.