Doubt Yourself! A Case for Partisan Political Rationality

Abstract

In this thesis, I argue that we should reject the hypothesis H that we are politically rational, i.e., that our mechanisms for political belief-formation are truth-conducive. This is because political beliefs distribute bimodally with non-random measurement errors across orthogonal issues. I consider alternate explanations of the distributions of our political beliefs based on psychological, rather than alethic, hypotheses. Finally, I offer recommendations for individuals and organizations seeking to increase public rationality. I advocate for heightened political skepticism, whereby partisans should generally reduce their convictions in their political views, and present empirical work that suggests that structured reasoning techniques like argument mapping can help facilitate open-minded thinking.