Motivated biases in the reception of empirical research findings: The role of social identity and moral values
Why do people reject scientific findings when they touch on their identity or their moral convictions? A DFG project using the example of the debate about violent video games.
The project investigated motivated biases in dealing with scientific research findings, using the public debate about violent video games (the German “killer games debate”) as an example. It pursued two parallel lines of research:
- At the Marburg site (Mario Gollwitzer), the project examined whether fundamentally science-critical attitudes among (frequent) gamers result from a threat to their social identity.
- At the Landau site (Tobias Rothmund), the project examined whether the reception of research on the effects of violent video games among non-gamers is shaped by motivated information processing in response to a threat to their values (protecting non-violence).
The project cooperated with other projects in the DFG Priority Programme 1409 “Science and the Public”, including teams in Kassel and Münster, and with Duisburg on information processing on the internet.