Brilliant Chris, you found it. How did you manage to get in there?
Wileys always shuts me out.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122260824/HTMLSTART
Sociological Inquiry
Volume 79, Issue 2, Pages 142-162
Published Online: 13 Mar 2009
There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred Justification
Monica Prasad 1 , Andrew J. Perrin 2 , Kieran Bezila 1 , Steve G.
Hoffman 3 , Kate Kindleberger 1 , Kim Manturuk 2 and Ashleigh Smith
Powers 4
1 Northwestern University
2 University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
3 University at Buffalo, State University of New York (SUNY)
4 Millsaps College
ABSTRACT
One of the most curious aspects of the 2004 presidential election was
the strength and resilience of the belief among many Americans that
Saddam Hussein was linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Scholars have suggested that this belief was the result of a campaign
of false information and innuendo from the Bush administration. We
call this the information environment explanation. Using a technique
of challenge interviews on a sample of voters who reported
believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11, we propose instead a
social psychological explanation for the belief in this link. We
identify a number of social psychological mechanisms voters use to
maintain false beliefs in the face of disconfirming information, and
we show that for a subset of voters the main reason to believe in the
link was that it made sense of the administration's decision to go to
war against Iraq. We call this inferred justification: for these
voters, the fact of the war led to a search for a justification for
it, which led them to infer the existence of ties between Iraq and
9/11.
[more]
Nice terms... disconfirming information, aka inconvenient truths
(which has become a spinners' term), motivational reasoning, ie
cherry-picking the facts to fit the belief. Useful study, but a
little odd, as if they're working in a sort of vacuum. They study the
effects without seeking the cause or asking how or why it's done, as
if it's self-administered, just something that happens to people,
like catching a cold. That it's not, it's the product of a massive
industry worth trillions. A strangely invisible industry, how
convenient.
ok, i googled SI, did a search of their website and found the article.
i'm pretty sure it's the one paul roberts is referring to. it dates
from 13 March of this year, so wonder whether it isn't another
exercise entirely from the one i heard about. it was over a year ago,
sometime in 2007 i think. you make a good point about liberal big
lies. it's something i've given some thought to. clearly they must
exist (though, in the u.s.a., there are certain semantic issues with
the category left/liberal, rather more so than with
right/conservative).
How about New Right/conservative? I don't think right/conservative
used to include the likes of what Robert called the howling monkeys,
aka the violently ignorant (both factors induced). I suppose it did
include the likes of the KKK, but I don't think they howl, do they?
On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh just said we need to move forward to
segretated buses. :-(
Liberal is a bit of an awkward term, things like neo-liberal
economics and trade liberalisation give it a bad press, and the
libertarians muddy it some more. Leftwingers in the US often talk of
progressives. As opposed to what, regressives? And left of what? I
don't think the centre is in the same place in the US as elsewhere.
Maybe the left needs a rebrand. At least a Nazi can say he's a Nazi
and nobody's in any doubt about what it means. Leftwing? Are you a
socialist? Are you a communist? (That's what John Bolton asked John
Pilger after an interview in which Pilger confronted him with what
There Must Be a Reason calls correct answers.) Or, are you a
socialist fascist? (A whole new species, must be a GMO.)
I wonder how many liberals also believe the rightwing myth that the
mainstream US media have a liberal bias etc. The aberrant mythology
on the right doesn't necessarily stay on the right. The right's
spinmeisters are much more savvy (very smart dumb guys) - well, just
savvy, the left doesn't really have spinmeisters as such, and it's
not very good at dealing with spin. Even if the spin itself bounces
off a leftie, it's often the other side that gets to set the terms of
the debate anyway: take it up and you've already lost. The left tends
to be so steeped in its intellect and facts and stuff that they can't
resist. But, as There Must Be a Reason says, it's not a discussion
(information environment), it's emotional (social psychological),
the facts aren't important. Very dumb smart guys, blind to low
cunning.
So everybody's being dumb in one way or the other: the left is
outmanoeuvred to a virtual standstill, and supporters of the right
play into the hands of folks (?) who do not have their best interests
at heart.
The
