{"title":"Does Schooling Increase Political Belief Accuracy?","authors":"Riccardo Di Leo, Marco Giani","doi":"10.1177/00323217231222104","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Citizens must hold accurate beliefs about politically relevant facts to preserve democratic representation, accountability and legislation. We theorize that, abstracting from one’s background, schooling per se does not trigger the epistemological sophistication that is necessary to get a grasp of the political world. In this article, we study whether schooling improves the accuracy of factual beliefs about the share of foreigners and unemployed, later in life. We derive an appealing metric of belief accuracy, matching survey respondents’ beliefs with the corresponding real-world datum at the time of the interview in their country, retrieving high levels of inaccuracy in both issues. More educated individuals display higher belief accuracy, most likely due to selection, rather than causality: compelling otherwise-dropouts to stay in school by extending compulsory education does not entail a significant effect on belief accuracy, in both issues. Taken together, cross-sectional and causal estimates suggest that education is necessary, but not sufficient, to contrast inaccurate beliefs.","PeriodicalId":51379,"journal":{"name":"Political Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-01-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Political Studies","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217231222104","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Citizens must hold accurate beliefs about politically relevant facts to preserve democratic representation, accountability and legislation. We theorize that, abstracting from one’s background, schooling per se does not trigger the epistemological sophistication that is necessary to get a grasp of the political world. In this article, we study whether schooling improves the accuracy of factual beliefs about the share of foreigners and unemployed, later in life. We derive an appealing metric of belief accuracy, matching survey respondents’ beliefs with the corresponding real-world datum at the time of the interview in their country, retrieving high levels of inaccuracy in both issues. More educated individuals display higher belief accuracy, most likely due to selection, rather than causality: compelling otherwise-dropouts to stay in school by extending compulsory education does not entail a significant effect on belief accuracy, in both issues. Taken together, cross-sectional and causal estimates suggest that education is necessary, but not sufficient, to contrast inaccurate beliefs.
期刊介绍:
Political Studies is a leading international journal committed to the very highest standards of peer review that publishes academically rigorous and original work in all fields of politics and international relations. The editors encourage a pluralistic approach to political science and debate across the discipline. Political Studies aims to develop the most promising new work available and to facilitate professional communication in political science.