Confounder review0 / 93 coded
Coding rules

An agent read the paper and judged that the confounder below is a common cause of the exposure and the outcome that the authors did not address. It supports this with retained findings from other papers linking the confounder to the exposure and to the outcome.

Judge how well justified that decision is: is the confounder plausible for this paper's exposure, outcome and population, is it truly not controlled or handled by the design, and do the retained findings support both links?

Clearly justified: you would make the same call. Ambiguous: reasonable people could disagree. Clearly unjustified: the confounder is implausible, already addressed, or the evidence does not support it. Use the note for reasons or corrections.

Confounder: info comm exposure · unaddressed

Meddling in the 2016 Elections and Satisfaction With Democracy in the US

10.1177/00323217221126300

Exposure

Respondent's strength or emphasis of the moral foundation of in-group loyalty: an evaluative moral value orientation privileging loyalty to one's group. The focal measure averages four MFQ loyalty items in April 2020; the construct is the respondent-level loyalty foundation, not general morality or other moral foundations.

Outcome

Respondent's empirical belief about whether a foreign influence campaign decided the outcome of a past election in favor of a particular candidate, recorded ordinally. The focal paper's exact belief variable is not independently present in the snapshot; the supplied Echo outcome ID is engagement in motivated reasoning, a different construct, and has been assigned to the empirical political-beliefs anchor only to satisfy focal-variable linkage, not as a substantively equivalent measure.

Agent rationale. The proposed communication exposure is distinct from both measured endpoints: the exposure is respondents’ April 2020 average across four Moral Foundations Questionnaire loyalty items, and the outcome is their ordinal belief that Russia’s influence campaign decided the 2016 election for Trump. The retained findings support both a possible communication-to-loyalty link and an information-to-political-belief link, so a common-cause path is plausible. No inventory entry directly controls respondents’ communication or message exposure. c18 restricts the sample to respondents aware of the campaign and accepting that meddling occurred, but does not hold constant their amount or type of communication exposure; c19 fixes the survey occasion but does not establish temporal ordering. Neither feature addresses the proposed path.
Paper's finding and adjustment
Finding
In an ordered-logit model of 489 respondents, higher loyalty scores were associated with a greater belief that Russia’s influence campaign decided the 2016 election among Democrats, and a lower belief among Republicans; the paper reports no corresponding effect for Independents. Figure 2 displays these party-conditional patterns. This is an adjusted observational association, not evidence from a randomized estimate.
Location
Data Analysis and Results, Table 2 Model 5; Figure 2; sample restriction in footnote 15.
Target population
U.S. survey respondents who had heard of Russia’s influence campaign and considered it likely or definitely true that Russia meddled in the 2016 election; Table 2 Model 5 includes 489 respondents.
Adjustment
Table 2 Model 5 estimates the loyalty association conditional on party ID, with loyalty-by-Republican and loyalty-by-Independent interactions (Democrats are the reference group). The specification also adjusts for the other four moral-foundation scores and the covariates listed below. The Table 2 analysis is restricted to respondents who had heard of the campaign and considered the claim of Russian meddling likely or definitely true (n=489).
Covariates
Party ID (Republican, Independent; Democrat reference), Loyalty-by-Republican interaction, Loyalty-by-Independent interaction, Fairness moral-foundation score, Harm moral-foundation score, Authority moral-foundation score, Purity moral-foundation score, Age, Gender, Education, Income, Ideology, Political knowledge, Race, Ethnicity, Nationalism, Social trust, 2016 candidate preference (Clinton, Other; Trump reference)
Abstract

In this article, we investigate how external election interventions influence satisfaction with democracy. We expect that mere knowledge about a foreign intervention will not affect system support. Instead, only those who believe that the external influence campaign had a decisive impact on the election outcome should see a reduction in democratic satisfaction. Furthermore, since electoral winners are likely to think that their preferred party provides superior policy outputs, supporters of winning parties should be less affected by their beliefs in the decisiveness of an influence campaign. Finally, we expect that those who place a high value on in-group loyalty will be more likely to engage in motivated reasoning. Thus, in-group loyalty should cause electoral winners to discount the substantive impact of a given electoral intervention, whereas it should have the opposite effect for losers. Our analysis relies on US survey data, and it uncovers broad support for our theoretical expectations.

Confounder → exposure: 2 retained findings

Political cues may shape respondents’ expressed moral-foundation scores, while information and messages can shape empirical political beliefs. These are compatible legs of a communication-exposure confounder, though the findings do not directly establish that particular messages affected both April 2020 loyalty scores and beliefs about Russia’s decisive impact.

Confounder → outcome: 12 retained findings

Five independent undeniable papers reached the stop rule.

The Dynamic Interplay of Negativity in News and Interpersonal Communication in Shaping Beliefs

Cause exposure to negativity in news coverage
Unit: individual, time period
Effect belief about the negative societal impact of COVID-19
Unit: individual, time period

Population: Individuals in Sweden during the COVID-19 pandemic

Why kept: Exposure to negative news coverage is linked to beliefs about COVID-19’s societal impact. Although the issue differs from the focal election belief, this is relevant evidence for the broader information-exposure-to-empirical-belief leg: news content can shape respondents’ beliefs about consequential public issues. It does not by itself establish an effect on beliefs about Russia’s influence campaign.

Echoes of Vietnam?

Cause exposure to body count or casualty ratio framing
Unit: person
Effect perception of the success or failure of U.S. military operations
Unit: person

Population: people

Why kept: The experiment links casualty framing to people's beliefs about military-operation success. This is issue-specific, but it supports the broader mechanism by which informational framing can shape empirical political beliefs.

Effectiveness of the “Made in China” TV advertisement

Cause exposure to the CNN “Made in China, Made with the World” advertisement
Unit: student
Effect perception of China's development
Unit: student

Population: Students at an American university

Why kept: The experiment links exposure to a foreign-country advertisement with students' perceptions of China's development. It is a narrow topic and student sample, but it supports the broader information-to-belief mechanism in a U.S. setting.

Just the Facts? Partisan Media and the Political Conditioning of Economic Perceptions

Cause exposure to proattitudinal information about the American economy
Unit: person
Effect perceptions of the state of the American economy
Unit: person

Population: partisans

Why kept: The experiment shows that exposure to proattitudinal economic information can shape partisans' perceptions of the economy, directly supporting an information-to-political-belief link.

Partisan Elites as Culprits? How Party Cues Shape Partisan Perceptual Gaps

Cause exposure to messages from party elites
Unit: citizen
Effect perception of the state of the national economy
Unit: citizen

Population: citizens

Why kept: The finding links party-elite messages with citizens' perceptions of the national economy, supporting the mechanism by which political communication can shape empirical beliefs.

Motivated Reasoning, Accuracy, and Updating in Perceptions of Bush's Legacy*

Cause television news exposure
Unit: person, time period
Effect perception of change in the economy
Unit: person, time period

Population: American citizens

Why kept: Among American citizens, television-news exposure is linked to perceptions of economic change. Though observational and about the economy, it supports the broader media-exposure-to-belief connection.

How the media matters for the economic vote: Evidence from Britain

Cause exposure to economic news
Unit: person, time period
Effect subjective evaluation of the economic situation
Unit: person, time period

Population: British citizens

Why kept: Among British citizens, economic-news exposure is linked to subjective economic evaluations. The setting differs from the U.S., but the general media-to-economic-belief mechanism is not specific to British institutions or practices.

The Moderating Effect of Ideological Identification on How Economic News and Economic Growth Impact Individual Economic Perceptions: Evidence From Chile

Cause exposure to negative economic news
Unit: person
Effect perception of current economic conditions
Unit: person

Population: Chileans surveyed in 2014–2018

Why kept: Among Chileans, exposure to negative economic news is linked to perceptions of current conditions. The country and topic differ, but the general mechanism of news exposure shaping empirical beliefs is relevant beyond a culturally specific setting.

Bridging the divide: Understanding the psychological factors influencing feminist women's support to transgender related policies

Cause cooperation-versus-conflict narrative exposure
Unit: person
Effect zero-sum beliefs about transgender rights
Unit: person

Population: ciswomen

Why kept: The experiment links cooperation-versus-conflict narratives to respondents’ empirical zero-sum beliefs about a political issue. This supports the general information-to-belief link, though the ciswomen sample and issue-specific mechanism limit its directness.

The Brexit deterrent? How member state exit shapes public support for the European Union

Cause receipt of positive information about Britain's sovereignty
Unit: citizen
Effect optimism about leaving the European Union
Unit: citizen

Population: Citizens in EU-27 member states

Why kept: Experimental information about British sovereignty affected citizens’ expectations about Brexit. This supports the broader link from political information exposure to predictive political beliefs.

Confronting Racism of Omission

Cause receipt of information about ethnic and racial inequality
Unit: person
Effect explanations for ethnic and racial inequality
Unit: person

Population: People in the Netherlands and the United States

Why kept: The experiment links information about racial inequality to respondents’ causal explanations for inequality, including in a U.S. sample, supporting an information-exposure-to-political-belief link.

How well justified is the agent's decision?

Keyboard: 1 justified · 2 ambiguous · 3 unjustified · N note (Esc to leave) · E expand all · S skip · U undo.