The Invented State

Abstract

Abstract Many Americans hold substantial misperceptions about what the government actually does. However, they get the facts wrong not because they are lazy, stupid, or blinded by partisan loyalty. Rather, information about existing policy is largely unavailable to them. News coverage instead prioritizes strategy, novelty, and change. Faced with these gaps in their knowledge, people often engage in inductive reasoning about public policies, especially when they care deeply about a particular issue. They draw on cues from the environment (sometimes including misleading information from elites) and their own cognitive heuristics to make inferences about what the government does. Many of these inferences are incorrect, and together they make up what I call the “invented state”: widespread misperceptions about public policy. However, correcting these policy misperceptions is highly effective at reducing false beliefs. In addition, providing people with corrective information has downstream effects on attitudes. When they learn how policies—including Social Security, refugee policy, and TANF—really work, their approval of these policies increases, and they also shift their policy priorities. Contrary to pundits’ assumptions of a public who is largely indifferent to policy, there is a deep public desire to learn basic facts about how the government works.