One thing that Republicans and Democrats have in common is a parallel disbelief over how the other side’s politicians get away with telling so many fibs, distortions, and outright lies.
But one reason politicians tell tales is that their supporters will usually believe whatever they want to hear — even if what they hear turns out to be false.
The Washington Post does a great job summarizing research showing that people tend to say “thanks, but no thanks” to the truth when it corrects a fib that meshes with what they already believe.
More interestingly, sometimes a factual correction only serves to reinforce misinformed beliefs, according to a study by political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler.
That’s something to keep in mind as the presidential campaign races through its final 40 days.
(Hat tip: The Monkey Cage)
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I was discussing this research with a friend, who rightly pointed out that you need to separate social conservatives (who tend to be “faith based” in their beliefs – do not want or need facts) vs. purely fiscal conservatives (who in many cases, but not all, are more intellectual in their beliefs). It is likely that the numbers for the faith based ones skew even harder in the sense that refutations reinforce misinformation. The more intellectual ones likely do react to refutations. The same will be true of liberals – some are “knee jerk” liberals and many are intellectual.
Note that one factor in refutations not having the intended effect: once you remind people of something they do not in general like, they are more likely to hold onto the strong dislike. For example, if you remind a Democrat of Guantanamo with facts or lies, many will have a more negative opinion either way, so refuting the lie will not change that. This has been the basis of many political ads that are telling the truth – focus on someone’s strong dislikes by reminding them.
@#2: I agree, but mostly because conservatism has so many creationists, which trumps any liberal self-reinforcing myth seven times sideways.
But there are still a rich field of liberal confirmation biases, like the tendency to discount any research that shows personal outcomes to be dependent on genetics. Liberals more than conservatives really want everyone to be created equal.
The first study cited in the post seems so obvious to hardly be worth mentioning. Anybody who has spent 90 seconds talking to a devoted partisan should know it to be true. The second study, on factual correction reinforcing prior beliefs, is more interesting.
@Paul K: You are right. If we are trying to generalize who is or is not susceptible to buying into partisan mythologies, doing it by party is the wrong way. Education levels may have a better correlation.
I’d actually bet that it is based on complex social factors. These mythologies thrive in areas where everyone thinks alike, and thus people can easily close themselves to other points of view without fear of challenge. So a primary cause may be uniformity of political leaning in a given locale.
Good point Mango. At the risk of upsetting people, Churches by nature are a place people go to not be challenged with new information, but to reinforce their own belief (why they belong). Further, strongly orthodox/fundamentalists of any religion tend to teach their following to resist and fight the words of outsiders, and so the response is to reinforce the beliefs. This method has been used by evangelicals to teach creationism as fact, by radical muslims to teach anti-western mores, and by many religions to create an us vs. them mentality (sense of belonging on the one hand, tendency to disbelieve non-members on the other). Powerful stuff that.
Everyone expects politicians to lie. The defining issue of this campaign is the main stream media crossing over from distortions to outright lies in order to get Obama elected. The smear campaign against Sarah Palin has also been unbelievable.
If people refuse to believe The New York Time’s “truth,” that’s a good thing.
“distortions to outright lies in order to get Obama elected.” – Sorry Robert, but this is not the RNC talking-points club. I am not sure if you mean the “lies” where they dared to expose McCain’s lies, or the “lies” where they dared to expose Palin’s lies, or the “lies” where they just quoted either one of them. It seems that both McCain and Palin are working to get Obama elected – they do not need the media.
Maybe your definition of “lies” is different, but usually it means not true and especially not factual. For example, when Palin says over and over that she sold the state plane on Ebay and made a profit, that runs counter to the (pesky) facts which say she ended up selling it at a loss through a broker.
“The smear campaign against Sarah Palin has also been unbelievable” – as in not believable? I assume you mean the “smears” where they pointed out that she lied about the plane, the bridge, earmarks, the gas pipeline, and just about everything else. See, normally, people use the word “smear” when they mean telling untruths rather than when exposing them.
Harry (Something’s Gotta Give):
“I have never lied to you, I have always told you some version of the truth.”
Sums it up for me.
Squirrel
http://www.mapallentown.com
Call me a cynic but I don not think the problem is that politicians are lying to the people. The problem is that the people want to be lied to. I think that the presidential primaries provide ample proof of this. In that process each party expects their politicians to tell them what they want to hear, and generally the politicians oblige. In politics admitting that your policy has any downside or that there is any validity to another point of view does not get votes. A good example of this is social security. The campaign of any candidate who spoke candidly about the problems would be DOA.
The tendency to believe what you want to hear is not limited to any ideology. It afflicts both left and right, religious and non-religious, rich and poor, educated and un-educated. In fact it seems to me that many of those who think themselves above such simple mindedness turn out to have the least open minds. One thing that I have noticed in myself is that trying to discern the lies that I am inclined to believe has helped me to sort out the political lies shoveled out by both parties.