The Ideological Boundary of Belief Change

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between political ideology and the extent to which individuals revise their beliefs when confronted with counter‐attitudinal information. Across two preregistered experiments conducted with demographically quota‐matched Polish samples (total N  = 1096), we assessed belief change on political and non‐political issues among participants spanning the full ideological spectrum. Exposure to counterevidence significantly increased belief revision, especially for non‐political topics. Although right‐leaning individuals showed slightly greater belief change than left‐leaning participants, model comparisons favoured an inverted U‐shaped over a linear association: people with moderate ideological views updated more, whereas those at either ideological extreme updated less. These findings suggest that reduced belief updating is associated more consistently with ideological extremity than with ideological direction, informing ongoing debates on ideological asymmetry.