Conservatives more susceptible to believing falsehoods
The title of the report is inaccurate, in my opinion, and my biggest gripe is here.
Unsurprising, of course. What is surprising is that what's going on isn't obvious to them.For example, participants rated this true statement that received widespread social media engagement when it came out: “Investigators for the DHS Office of the Inspector General have identified poor conditions in several Texas migrant facilities, including extreme overcrowding and serious health risks.”
Results showed that 54% of Democrats correctly said that the statement was “definitely true” – compared to only 18% of Republicans.
Another statement – a false one – was “While serving as Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia, selling 20% of the U.S. uranium supply to that country in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation.”
Here, only 2% of Democrats said this was “definitely true,” but 41% of Republicans did.
Not surprising to me but it might be surprising to some.Conservatives and liberals were equally good at detecting truths and falsehoods when most true stories were labeled politically neutral.
The study's creator says:
I totally disagree.Garrett wrote:We show that the media environment is shaping people’s ability to do this very basic, fundamental task. Democracy depends on people being able to tell the difference between what is true and false and it falters when people have difficulty agreeing on what’s real,” he said.
Judging by the quotes I've provided it's clear the study needs to be redone. The basic format of the study seems okay, but they are going to need some funding, they need to incentivize getting the right answers. They need to pay people for getting the right answers. Where the study will be most informative will be with lesser-educated people who could use a few extra bucks. Some people need to be offered a dollar for every correct political answer, another group offered 5$, another 10$, and if funding is available, go up to at least 50$ per correct political answer.
From what I'm hearing, Rudy Giuliani is having an easier time differentiating between truths and falsehoods along with his changing incentives for believing certain political claims.
Again, this guy needs a talking to. We don't know the bolded yet, because we don't know whether they are "misperceiving" something or intentionally answering contrary to what they really believe. The mean way of putting it is that conservatives instinctively know when to lie in order to promote their common cause. A nicer way to put would be to point out that conservatives tend to be religious in nature and "truth" in religion has different meanings. "Truth Social" isn't called truth social over concern with truth in the scientific sense, but truth in the "my truth" sense, the personal testimony sense. It's a "free speech" kind of truth, something is "true" in a sense if the person passionately believes it -- or at least passionately says it.We saw that viral political falsehoods tended to benefit conservatives, while truths tended to favor liberals. That makes it a lot harder for conservatives to avoid misperceptions,” Garrett said
To use a metaphor from the world of investing, we might say liberals are more like value investors while conservatives are more like momentum investors. The hope, of course, is that fundamentals win in the long run, but we've seen from the investing world itself just how powerful meme trading can be, and like reddit users piling on Game Stop and breaking markets, conservatives may very well break democracy before reality settles all scores. Don't underestimate the power of momentum.
