Opinion · Psychology (Social Psychology)
Here is a policy: new tariffs on goods from China. In a 2020 study, researchers showed the same policy description to college students and changed only the president’s name attached to it. When it was Obama’s plan, 58% of Democrats agreed with it. When it was Trump’s, 14% did.
Republicans moved the other way, from 48% to 67%. The policy never changed. Only the name did. When I first read about this, my reaction was simple: isn’t this just modern politics? It is. But the habit behind it is older than any election, and it has a name. Psychologists call it reactive devaluation.
A good offer loses value once the other side makes it
Reactive devaluation is the habit of judging an idea by who offered it. If someone on our side says it, we lean in and trust it. If someone on the other side says it, we brush it off or call it a bad idea before we’ve really weighed it.
The key word is “side.” This isn’t only about people we like or dislike. It’s about who sits across the table from us. And it kicks in the moment they put the offer down.
Stanford psychologist Lee Ross and his colleagues saw this on their own campus during the apartheid era. Students were pushing the university to pull its investments out of South Africa. The researchers asked students to rate several plans. Students liked a plan more while it was only hypothetical. Once the university actually adopted that plan, they rated it lower.
Nothing in the plan had changed. It had simply become the other side’s offer.
Why the name ends up doing the reading
One reason is a quick bit of logic that feels sensible. If the other side is offering this, it must be good for them. And if it’s good for them, it’s probably bad for me. That step happens fast, and it rarely gets checked.
A second reason is effort. Reading a policy closely is hard work. A name or a party label is a shortcut that answers the question for us.
A third reason is loyalty. Agreeing with the other side can feel like switching teams, even on a small point. Saying “they have a point” in front of friends costs something. Dismissing the idea costs nothing.
Yale psychologist Geoffrey Cohen tested how strong that shortcut is. In a 2003 study, liberal and conservative students judged two welfare plans, one generous and one strict. Without party cues, they voted by content. Liberals liked the generous plan and conservatives liked the strict one.
Once they learned which plan their party backed, content stopped mattering. They followed the party, even when that meant backing a plan that cut against their own views. Then came the striking part. They didn’t think the party had swayed them. They believed they had judged the plan on its merits. People on the other side, they assumed, were the biased ones.
Three places a label rewrites the offer
Politics is the loudest example, but the same pull shows up wherever there are two sides.
A peace plan with the author swapped
In a 2002 study, Ifat Maoz, Lee Ross and colleagues gave Israeli Jewish participants a real peace proposal drafted by the Israeli government. Some were told the truth about where it came from. Others were told the Palestinians had proposed it.
The “Palestinian” version was rated less favorably. In a second study, Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs alike devalued the same plan when it came from the opposing side. The stakes here were as high as stakes get, and the label still moved the verdict.
The same law under two names
In 2014, Morning Consult asked people about expanding Medicaid. Half saw the question with the label “Affordable Care Act.” Half saw the same policy with no name. According to The New Republic’s report, support was 62% with the label and 71% without it.
Among Republicans, support with the label was 36%. Without it, support rose about 15 points. The law’s name had become a team jersey, and the jersey did part of the judging.
The idea from the other team at work
Offices have their own version, often called “not invented here.” A team rejects a fix because another department came up with it. Management research has found a strong bias against ideas from outside the group.
Picture two coworkers who have clashed for months. One proposes moving the weekly meeting to Monday. The other hears a power move. If a friendly colleague had said the same thing, it would have sounded like common sense.
Homes are not immune either. In the middle of a fight, “maybe we should both sleep on it” can sound like a dodge from a partner. The same words from a friend sound like wisdom. The advice is identical. What changed is that one person is, for the moment, on the other side.
Modern politics is built to trigger it
So yes, I’d argue modern politics is the cleanest example we have. Reactive devaluation needs two things: clear sides and visible labels. Politics now supplies both, all day long.
Every bill arrives with a sponsor’s name. Every plan gets framed as one party’s idea. Before most people read a single line, they already know which team owns it. At that point, reading starts to feel optional.
The 2020 study by Michael Bernstein and colleagues shows how far this goes. It used a small sample, 195 students at three colleges, so the exact numbers deserve caution. But the pattern ran in both directions. A plan to lower prescription drug prices drew 24% support from Republicans when it was Obama’s. When it was Trump’s, that jumped to 72%. Democrats dropped from 97% to 86% for the same plan.
Neither party owns this habit. Each side does it to the other side’s ideas.
Distrust of the source isn’t always a mistake
It would be unfair to call every reaction like this irrational. Sometimes the source really does matter.
In a negotiation, the other side does want a good deal for itself. An offer from an opponent may hide a catch. A politician’s track record is fair evidence too. If someone broke past promises, doubting the next one is reasonable.
The trouble starts when the label replaces the reading instead of adding to it. Being careful about an offer is one thing. Rejecting it without checking what it says is another.
That gap also explains why each side feels like the reasonable one. As I wrote in my piece on naive realism, we tend to see our own view as neutral and the other view as biased. Reactive devaluation adds a twist. Even the other side’s compromise looks like a trick. It’s one reason partisan polls swing when the White House changes hands, a pattern I looked at in the Pew economy poll.
Try the name-swap test
If loyalty is part of the problem, lowering the threat to identity should help. There is some evidence for that. In a 2007 set of studies, Cohen, Ross and colleagues had some participants first write about a personal value unrelated to politics. Then came a mock negotiation over an abortion bill, with their convictions front and center.
Those participants made more concessions and rated their opponent more favorably. The samples were small, and the effect reversed in some conditions, so I wouldn’t call it a cure. But it fits the idea that we dismiss the other side hardest when we feel our identity is on the line. I looked at that same self-protective reflex in why people get defensive.
You can’t turn this habit off. But you can catch it with a few simple questions the next time an idea makes you bristle:
- Swap the name. If someone on my side had proposed this, word for word, how would I rate it?
- Split the two questions. “Does it help them?” and “Is it good?” are different questions. A plan can do both.
- Read one line before judging. Can I name one specific thing in it I disagree with, beyond who wrote it?
If the only thing you dislike is the name on the cover, that tells you more about the label than about the idea.
Editorial note: This piece grew out of studying a psychology concept rather than following a trending news story. It looks at how people judge ideas from each side and does not endorse any party or position. Several studies cited used small or specific samples, so they show a tendency, not a rule for every person. The featured image is AI-generated.