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Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends

Voters evaluate political candidates not only based on their recent record but their history, often faced with weighing the relevance of long-past misdeeds in current appraisal. How should a distant transgression be taken to reflect on the present? Across multiple years, political figures and incide...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Dawson, Andrew J., Leith, Scott A., Ward, Cindy L. P., Williams, Sarah, Wilson, Anne E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9632895/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36327315
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277179
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author Dawson, Andrew J.
Leith, Scott A.
Ward, Cindy L. P.
Williams, Sarah
Wilson, Anne E.
author_facet Dawson, Andrew J.
Leith, Scott A.
Ward, Cindy L. P.
Williams, Sarah
Wilson, Anne E.
author_sort Dawson, Andrew J.
collection PubMed
description Voters evaluate political candidates not only based on their recent record but their history, often faced with weighing the relevance of long-past misdeeds in current appraisal. How should a distant transgression be taken to reflect on the present? Across multiple years, political figures and incidents, we found that people’s subjective perceptions of time concerning political candidate’s histories can differ radically, regardless of objective fact; political bias shapes people’s perception of the time of things past. Results showed that despite equidistant calendar time, people subjectively view a favored politician’s successes and opposing politician’s failures as much closer in time, while a favored politician’s failures and opponent’s success seem much further away. Studies 1–3 tested the proposed phenomena across distinct (real and hypothetical) political contexts, while Study 4 tested the causal effects of temporal distance framing. Study 5 provided a final preregistered test of the findings. Overall, we demonstrate that partisans can protect their candidates and attack opponents by shifting their perception of time.
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spelling pubmed-96328952022-11-04 Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends Dawson, Andrew J. Leith, Scott A. Ward, Cindy L. P. Williams, Sarah Wilson, Anne E. PLoS One Research Article Voters evaluate political candidates not only based on their recent record but their history, often faced with weighing the relevance of long-past misdeeds in current appraisal. How should a distant transgression be taken to reflect on the present? Across multiple years, political figures and incidents, we found that people’s subjective perceptions of time concerning political candidate’s histories can differ radically, regardless of objective fact; political bias shapes people’s perception of the time of things past. Results showed that despite equidistant calendar time, people subjectively view a favored politician’s successes and opposing politician’s failures as much closer in time, while a favored politician’s failures and opponent’s success seem much further away. Studies 1–3 tested the proposed phenomena across distinct (real and hypothetical) political contexts, while Study 4 tested the causal effects of temporal distance framing. Study 5 provided a final preregistered test of the findings. Overall, we demonstrate that partisans can protect their candidates and attack opponents by shifting their perception of time. Public Library of Science 2022-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC9632895/ /pubmed/36327315 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277179 Text en © 2022 Dawson et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Dawson, Andrew J.
Leith, Scott A.
Ward, Cindy L. P.
Williams, Sarah
Wilson, Anne E.
Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends
title Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends
title_full Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends
title_fullStr Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends
title_full_unstemmed Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends
title_short Far away or yesterday? Shifting perceptions of time for political ends
title_sort far away or yesterday? shifting perceptions of time for political ends
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9632895/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36327315
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277179
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