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Paper Abstract
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This paper introduces and tests a new concept-partisan disbelief in knowledge-the tendency for partisans to believe that their in-group is more knowledgeable than the opposing party, even about basic non-partisan facts. Using large-scale surveys and experiments in South Korea and the United States, we document that partisans perceive their in-group's accuracy rate in judging non-partisan facts to exceed that of the out-group by about 15 percentage points. This partisan disblief distorts information processing: When identical information is attributed to outgroup sources, individuals are less likely to update their opinions, revealing an in-group bias that extends beyond explicitly partisan issues. Providing corrective evidence that both sides are equally knowledgeable reduces partisan disbelief and weakens this in-group bias. It also temporarily lowers affective polarization, though the effect fades over time. Together, these results show that polarization extends beyond politics to perceptions of competence, identifying a novel cognitive mechanism through which social identity undermines accurate information processing and mutual understanding in societies.
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Paper Citation
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Kikuchi, Shinnosuke and Kishishita, Daiki and Kweon, Yesola and Kasuya, Yuko, Distrusting the Out-Party: Partisan Disbelief and Biased Information Processing (December 31, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5617450
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Paper URL
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https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5617450
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