{"id":11673,"date":"2017-03-06T07:07:58","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T07:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=11673"},"modified":"2017-03-06T07:07:58","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T07:07:58","slug":"power-pre-existing-views","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/power-pre-existing-views\/","title":{"rendered":"The power of pre-existing views"},"content":{"rendered":"

Study shows how information sources affect voters.<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Adam Berinsky
Photo: Stuart Darsch<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —\u00a0For all the fact-checking and objective reporting produced by major media outlets, voters in the U.S. nonetheless rely heavily on their pre-existing views when deciding if politicians\u2019 statements are true or not, according to a new study co-authored by MIT scholars.<\/span><\/p>\n

The study, conducted during the U.S. presidential primaries for the 2016 election, uses a series of statements by President Donald J. Trump \u2014 then one of many candidates in the Republican field \u2014 to see how partisanship and prior beliefs interact with evaluations of objective fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers looked at both true and false statements Trump made, and surveyed voters from both parties about their responses. They found that the source of the claim was significant for members of both parties. For instance, when Trump falsely suggested vaccines cause autism, a claim rejected by scientists, Republicans were more likely to believe the claim when it was attributed to Trump than they were when the claim was presented without attribution.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other hand, when Trump correctly stated the financial cost of the Iraq War, Democrats were less likely to believe his claim than they were when the same claim was presented in unattributed form.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t just the case that misinformation attributed to Trump was less likely to be rejected by Republicans,\u201d says Adam Berinsky, a professor of political science at MIT and a co-author of the new paper. \u201cThe things Trump said that were true, if attributed to Trump, [made] Democrats less likely to believe [them]. \u2026 Trump really does polarize people\u2019s views of reality.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, self-identified Republicans who were surveyed gave Trump\u2019s false statements a collective \u201cbelief score\u201d of about six, on a scale of 0-10, when those statements were attributed to him. Without attribution, the belief score fell to about 4.5 out of 10.<\/span><\/p>\n

Self-identified Democrats, on the other hand, gave Trump\u2019s true statements a belief score of about seven out of 10 when those statements were unattributed. When the statements were attributed to Trump, the aggregate belief score fell to about six out of 10.<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper, \u201cProcessing Political Information,\u201d is being published today in the journal Royal Society Open Science<\/em>. The co-authors are Swire, Berinsky, Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Western Australia and the University of Bristol, and Ullrich K.H. Ecker of the University of Western Australia.<\/span><\/p>\n

In conducting the study, the researchers surveyed 1,776 U.S. citizens during the fall of 2015, presenting them with four true statements from Trump as well as four false ones.<\/span><\/p>\n

After correcting the false statements, the scholars also asked the survey\u2019s respondents if they were less likely to support Trump as a result \u2014 but found the candidate\u2019s factual issues were largely irrelevant to the respondents\u2019 voting choices.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt just doesn\u2019t have an effect on support for him,\u201d Berinsky says. \u201cIt\u2019s not that saying things that are incorrect is garnering support for him, but it\u2019s not costing him support either.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest study is one in a series of papers Berinsky has published on political rumors, facticity, and partisan beliefs. His previous work has shown that, for instance, corrections of political rumors tend to be ineffective unless made by people within the same political party as the intended audience. That is, rumors about Democrats that are popular among Republican voters are most effectively shot down by other Republicans, and vice versa.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a related sense, Berinsky thinks, solutions to matters of truth and falsehood in the current \u2014 and highly polarized \u2014 political moment may need to have a similar partisan structure, due to the blizzard of claims and counterclaims about truth, falsehoods, \u201cfake news,\u201d and more.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn a partisan time, the solution to misinformation has to be partisan, because there just aren\u2019t authorities that will be recognized by both sides of the aisle,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a tough nut to crack, this question of misinformation and how to correct it,\u201d he adds. \u201cAnybody who tells you there\u2019s an easy solution, like, \u2018three easy things you can do to correct misinformation,\u2019 don\u2019t listen to them. If it were that easy, it would be solved by now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Study shows how information sources affect voters. CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —\u00a0For all the fact-checking and objective reporting produced by major media outlets, voters in the U.S. nonetheless rely heavily on their pre-existing views when deciding if politicians\u2019 statements are true or not, according to a new study co-authored by MIT scholars. The study, conducted during the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","category-political-science"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",600,400,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",600,400,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",540,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",639,426,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/MIT-Political-Science_Adam-Berinsky_0.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Other<\/a> Political Science<\/a>","tag_info":"Political Science","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}