Compare methods

	Partisan Motivated Reasoning Paradigm	Misinformation Correction Experiment
Field	Political Psychology	Political Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2006	2010
Originator	Charles Taber & Milton Lodge	Brendan Nyhan & Jason Reifler
Type	Experimental paradigm for directional reasoning	Survey experiment on factual correction
Seminal source	Taber, C. S., & Lodge, M. (2006). Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs. American Journal of Political Science, 50(3), 755-769.	Nyhan, B., & Reifler, J. (2010). When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions. Political Behavior, 32(2), 303-330.
Aliases	Motivated Skepticism Paradigm, Directional Motivated Reasoning Design, Disconfirmation Bias Experiment, Partisan Bias Information-Processing Paradigm	Fact-Check Correction Experiment, Misperception Correction Design, Backfire Effect Experiment, Belief Updating Correction Study
Related	3	3
Summary	The partisan motivated reasoning paradigm is the experimental template for showing that citizens process political information to protect their existing loyalties rather than to reach accurate conclusions. In Taber and Lodge's foundational 2006 design, partisans who read balanced pro and con arguments rated congenial arguments as stronger, spent effort counterarguing uncongenial ones, sought out confirming information, and ended up more extreme than they began. Martin Bisgaard's later work extends the logic to facts, showing that even when partisans accept the same factual reality they reinterpret who deserves credit or blame, so getting the facts right can paradoxically fuel rather than dampen partisan reasoning.	A misinformation correction experiment tests whether a factual correction can reduce belief in a political misperception. In Nyhan and Reifler's influential 2010 design, all respondents read a misleading claim and a random subset also read a correction, after which their factual beliefs are measured. Their alarming finding was a backfire effect: for some groups, corrections increased rather than decreased misperceptions among those ideologically threatened by the fact. Later large-scale replications by Wood and Porter found backfire to be rare and corrections generally effective, making this design a case study in how political psychology refines a striking result through replication.