Political Psychologists: Scaring and Lying to Voters works

There have been a couple of interesting studies published in the last week that may shed some light on why, despite promises for clean and issues-based campaigns, our elections always turn to gutter politics. The short answer: It works.

First, from ABC news:

In the study, released Thursday in the journal Science, Rice University professor of political science John Alford and his colleagues studied 46 subjects with strong political beliefs. They subjected these people to startling stimuli then compared responses with their stated viewpoints on key political issues.

Those subjects who were the most startled by the unexpected or disturbing stimuli were also the ones who were most likely to favor such issues as increased defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War.

The people who were less startled by the stimuli, which included such things as a spider crawling across the face of a terrified person or loud, unexpected noises, tended to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies, pacifism and gun control.

To poke a few holes, the study was based on a very small sample of people who already held strong political beliefs, so it’s tough to jump to any serious conclusions without more comprehensive research. But it does touch on an interesting notion—that our beliefs and perceptions of the world may be tied to biology. Past research suggests as much as 30%-40% of our beliefs may have biological roots, according to the political scientist who conducted the study.

But add to that another study about how misinformation changes people’s perceptions of candidates, even after they hear refutations of the false information, and an ugly picture emerges. Here’s how it works:

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.

The effect may be more pronounced with conservatives, who upon hearing a refutation “might “argue back” against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation,” according to the authors.

So we’ve basically learned something that politicians have known for decades: that scaring and lying to voters actually works (maybe more so for Republicans). Great.

Cross-posted at Ablogistan.