The Politics of Ethics: Can Honesty Cross Over Political Polarization?

This research demonstrates how confirmation and disconfirmation biases manifest based on individuals’ political affiliations when processing a self-disclosure message in the context of a political crisis. An experiment presented a crisis message in which a politician voluntarily revealed his campaign finance violations. The results revealed that confirmation bias and disconfirmation bias significantly influenced the information processing of participants based on their political affiliations. Democrat participants were significantly more open to and forgiving of the crisis message when it featured a Democrat politician. In contrast, Republican participants showed a strong tendency to be more critical and less forgiving under the same conditions. However, this pattern reversed when a Republican politician was shown in the crisis message. The research also tested moderated mediation hypotheses: the interaction effects between study participants’ political affiliations and politicians’ parties were mediated by perceived attitude toward the politician and crisis responsibility, leading to ethical perceptions about the politician. The study contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying political polarization and the ways in which the biases of confirmation and disconfirmation influence individuals’ processing of political messages.