Chapter 8 investigates how mental models shape individuals’ responses to policy information and partisan cues. Through a survey experiment in Italy involving hypothetical price controls on olive oil, the chapter shows that people with high economic knowledge – the Economist Mental Model – are far more influenced by cost–benefit data, reducing their support for price controls by 20 percentage points once presented with evidence of net societal losses. Meanwhile, those with lower economic knowledge respond more to partisan cues, increasing their support by about 6 points when party leaders endorse the policy. Notably, both groups share similar baseline preferences in the absence of new information, indicating that economic knowledge – not preexisting ideology – drives these contrasting reactions. The chapter further reveals that high-knowledge participants are 25 percentage points more likely to calculate the policy’s true societal impact, illustrating the distinctive role of economic reasoning in integrating and acting on new policy information.