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From: "Alamaine, IVe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: September 19, 2008 7:34:02 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [ctrl] The Power of Political Misinformation
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091402375_pf.html
The Power of Political Misinformation
By Shankar Vedantam
Monday, September 15, 2008; A06
Have you seen the photo of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah
Palin brandishing a rifle while wearing a U.S. flag bikini? Have you
read
the e-mail saying Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was sworn
into the U.S. Senate with his hand placed on the Koran? Both are
fabricated -- and are among the hottest pieces of misinformation in
circulation.
As the presidential campaign heats up, intense efforts are underway to
debunk rumors and misinformation. Nearly all these efforts rest on the
assumption that good information is the antidote to misinformation.
But a series of new experiments show that misinformation can exercise a
ghostly influence on people's minds after it has been debunked -- even
among people who recognize it as misinformation. In some cases,
correcting misinformation serves to increase the power of bad
information.
In experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock at Yale
University, volunteers were given various items of political
misinformation from real life. One group of volunteers was shown a
transcript of an ad created by NARAL Pro-Choice America that accused
John
G. Roberts Jr., President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court at the
time, of "supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic
bomber."
A variety of psychological experiments have shown that political
misinformation primarily works by feeding into people's preexisting
views. People who did not like Roberts to begin with, then, ought to
have
been most receptive to the damaging allegation, and this is exactly what
Bullock found. Democrats were far more likely than Republicans to
disapprove of Roberts after hearing the allegation.
Bullock then showed volunteers a refutation of the ad by abortion-rights
supporters. He also told the volunteers that the advocacy group had
withdrawn the ad. Although 56 percent of Democrats had originally
disapproved of Roberts before hearing the misinformation, 80 percent of
Democrats disapproved of the Supreme Court nominee afterward. Upon
hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval of Roberts dropped only
to
72 percent.
Republican disapproval of Roberts rose after hearing the misinformation
but vanished upon hearing the correct information. The damaging charge,
in other words, continued to have an effect even after it was debunked
among precisely those people predisposed to buy the bad information in
the first place.
Bullock found a similar effect when it came to misinformation about
abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Volunteers
were shown a Newsweek report that suggested a Koran had been flushed
down
a toilet, followed by a retraction by the magazine. Where 56 percent of
Democrats had disapproved of detainee treatment before they were
misinformed about the Koran incident, 78 percent disapproved afterward.
Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval dropped back only to
68 percent -- showing that misinformation continued to affect the
attitudes of Democrats even after they knew the information was false.
Bullock and others have also shown that some refutations can strengthen
misinformation, especially among conservatives.
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups
of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the
comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have
weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003.
Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush
administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons
before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both
claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The
refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about
Bush
administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One
group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included
current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of
conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those
provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts
increase revenue.
In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke
University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that
Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because
conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a
refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in
their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation.
Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals
were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush
administration's stance on stem cell research.
Bullock, Nyhan and Reifler are all Democrats.
Reifler questioned attempts to debunk rumors and misinformation on the
campaign trail, especially among conservatives: "Sarah Palin says she
was
against the Bridge to Nowhere," he said, referring to the pork-barrel
project Palin once supported before she reversed herself. "Sending those
corrections to committed Republicans is not going to be effective, and
they in fact may come to believe even more strongly that she was always
against the Bridge to Nowhere."
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~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Alamaine, IVe
Grand Forks, ND, US of A
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a
philosopher." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)
"Being ignorant is not such a shame as being unwilling to learn." -
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758 (Benjamin Franklin)
~~~~~~~
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