Differences that don’t make much difference: Party asymmetry in open-minded cognitive styles has little relationship to information processing behavior

Abstract

We investigated the link between party identification and several cognitive styles that are associated with open-minded thinking. We used a web-based survey which involved participants rating the strength of an argument they initially disagreed with. Results showed that Democrats tend to score higher and Republicans tend to score lower on open-minded cognitive style variables. However, mediation analyses showed that these partisan differences in cognitive style generally have negligible relationships with how individuals assess the strength of arguments they disagree with. In other words, partisan differences in cognitive style may often make little meaningful difference to information processing.