Evaluating Dynamic Constraint in Belief Systems

Do political belief systems exhibit dynamic constraint? Drawing on a bounded rationality account of belief formation, I examine whether coordinated belief change occurs when credible information and cross-issue cues target a range of political beliefs. I test this expectation in a pre-registered survey experiment in the United States (N = 2,414), in which participants are presented with factual information about income inequality and social mobility—with and without explicit target cues, which indicate that the two issues are conceptually linked. The information treatments produced large first-stage effects on their respective target beliefs, while leaving peripheral beliefs unaffected. In exploratory analyses, I extend these analyses to economic preferences and people's self-perceptions of belief consistency. The findings delimit the scope of dynamic constraint and suggest that belief updating may be largely domain-specific.