Americans' Attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act: What Role Do Beliefs Play?. Issue 1 (March 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Li, Gabriel Miao; Pasek, Josh; Krosnick, Jon A.; Stark, Tobias H.; Agiesta, Jennifer; Sood, Gaurav; Tompson, Trevor; Gross, Wendy
• Other Names: Druckman James N. guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Volume 700:Issue 1(2022)
• Page Start: 41
• Page End: 54
• Publication Date: 2022-03
• Subjects: evaluations -- belief updating -- Affordable Care Act -- misperceptions; Social sciences -- Periodicals; Social sciences -- United States -- Periodicals; Political science -- Periodicals; United States -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 300
• DOI: 10.1177/00027162221098020
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0002-7162

Abstract

How do people form their attitudes toward complex policy issues? Although there has long been an assumption that people consider the various components of those issues and come to an overall assessment, a growing body of recent work has instead suggested that people may reach summary judgments as a function of heuristic cues and goal-oriented rationalizations. This study examines how well a component-based model fits Americans' evaluations of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, an important and highly contentious piece of legislation that contained several constituent parts. Despite strong partisan disagreement about the law, we find that Democrats and Republicans both appear to evaluate the law as a function of their beliefs and what the law would do as well as their confidence in those beliefs. This finding implies that correcting misperceptions and increasing awareness of the components of legislation have the potential to change attitudes.