Ideological Dis(Similarity) in Memory and Preference for Information

People like similar others more than dissimilar others, and political dissimilarity leads to particular disliking. Although people are motivated to find similarities with others, they also seek information that confirms their preexisting beliefs. Thus, when someone discovers that another person is politically dissimilar, they may seek out dissimilarity to confirm their belief that the person is different. Participants in our study (N=371) were randomly assigned to view a profile of a target person with a similar or dissimilar political ideology. This profile contained general information such as the target’s hobbies and occupation. Half of the target’s responses were similar to participants’ own and half were dissimilar. Participants then reported their preference for each piece of information and completed a memory test for the information. We predicted that people would better remember and prefer similar information for ideologically similar targets but different information for ideologically dissimilar targets. Results showed that although people better remembered dissimilar information overall, this effect did not depend on the target’s ideological similarity. However, people preferred similar information when a target was ideologically similar and different information when a target was ideologically dissimilar, in line with predictions. Our findings suggest that people better remember dissimilar information about a person regardless of whether they are ideologically similar, but whether people prefer similar or dissimilar information about a person depends on their ideological similarity. These results contribute to our understanding of confirmation bias and political prejudice, which may help us understand why political biases persist and lead to polarization.

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