Civic Duty and Political Preference Formation

Abstract

While a sense of civic duty has long been perceived as important for political participation, little is known about its implications for political preference formation. I argue that civic duty has salubrious effects for opinion formation by dampening partisan distortions in decision making. I theorize that a heightened sense of civic duty stimulates a motivation to form “accurate” opinions and, in doing so, diminishes the effects of partisan motivated reasoning. Using survey experiments focused on tax and education policies, I provide evidence that when civic norms are accentuated, at times, people shirk party endorsements and incorporate substantive policy information in preference formation. The implications for citizen competence and public opinion in democratic politics are discussed.