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Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders – even when they know it’s factually inaccurate, if they believe the statements evoke a deeper, more important “truth.”

Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders – even when they know it’s factually inaccurate. According to our research, voters often recognize when their parties’ claims are not based on objective evidence. Yet they still respond positively, if they believe these inaccurate statements evoke a deeper, more important “truth.”

54 comments
  • AKA, I have a pre-existing worldview that provides me with some sense of identity, and that is more important than reality or truth.

    This is 'cognitive bias' leading to 'cognitive dissonance' when you unconsciously or unintentionally believe in things that sound right but are later revealed to you to be false...

    ... And its called 'motivated reasoning' when you just actually consciously know that you're rejecting things that clash against your worldview.

    Anyway all of this has been known by psychologists for what, 50+ years?

    They just rarely explicitly state that this applies to political beliefs, even though there is no real scope limitation on what topic one can pick and choose acceptance or rejection on.

    I suppose the only interesting part here is that people are now just en masse admitting they are fact-shunning hypocrites?

    • In summary: You and me, we’re in the same tribe, and we hold the superior worldview. Those people over there in the out-group are wrong. They also do things the wrong way, because they aren’t in our tribe.

      Hearing this sort of talk pulls some strings in the human mind. There’s this interesting default setting that says tribalism = TRUE.

    • Which itself is something notable imho, in showing how far it has come along, i.e. as a barometer reading on how far gone his supporters are.

      They used to hide it, feeling more shame that their views might not be as acceptable by the general public as they now know that they are.

      Don't forget that some sitting members of Congress are currently calling for an active, not-joking civil war.

      We ignore all of this at our peril.

  • You can blame the gullible listener to only wanting to hear what they want to hear ....

    ... or ...

    You can blame the well trained, educated and directed media for promoting, highlighting and normalizing the idea of spreading semitruth and fabrication in order to push an overall agenda.

    I'm no conspiracy theorist, I don't subscribe to dumb delusions of aliens or illluminati cults running the world ... but I do believe that there is a culture of highly trained individuals working in media these days who just knowingly spread extreme views and pass them off as legitimate enough to be debated. A politician like Turnip shouldn't be normal ... but a national media has made it completely normal to have someone as unwell, politically unstable and sociopathic as Turnip to be acceptable enough to talk about endlessly as if there is nothing wrong with him.

    In this case .... I blame the messenger

    • Why does it have to be either or? It's totally reasonable to blame BOTH.

      • I could agree .... but the gullible masses have no idea they are being manipulated ... while the trained and educated media managers and owners (and to a lesser extent the actual journalists) know exactly what they are doing and why

        I can blame the listeners for being stupid ... but I still blame the messenger for intentionally misleading the public.

      • It might be reasonable to blame people but it's entirely useless and even counterproductive. There's no solution that can come out of that. Even if you rebuild the education system, a significant portion would still be vulnerable. You can see that in countries with better education systems. And then of course there's the blowback that results from blaming people, which the very same actors you're trying to protect from co-opt and use against you.

        Blaming corporate media on the other hand can produce solutions and quickly. The political system has unfortunately been captured to such an extent by capital that this isn't even considered. Still that the easier and more productive avenue to pursue if anyone would try.

    • Let me frame this like so:

      It's just another example of capitalist for-profit corporations that maximize profits while offloading their negative externalities onto the rest of us.

      They know they're making money when they tell lies and they don't care about the downstream effects. For some the downstream effects might even be desirable.

      Another way to frame it is: corporate media makes money, with informing (or disinforming) the public as a byproduct.

  • "Alternative facts"

    It's how religions work. The positive bullshitting is not much different than a sermon full of made up anecdotes - stories with the purpose of "evoking a deeper truth".

    This is literally the "WOLOLO!" meme in action...

  • In other words, many voters lack critical thinking skills. Yep, that tracks.

  • Of course they do.

    If there’s a binary choice (and here in the UK it basically is), you’re going to vote for the candidate that broadly covers your requirements from government, conveniently ignoring the bits you don’t like. The alternative is to not vote at all because no one candidate or party can perfectly mirror your values.

54 comments