More on conservative psychology

Further to yesterday’s post, here’s one from the WaPo on how conservatives handle information that disproves their beliefs: yes, contradictory information only strengthens their existing convictions.

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.

The article doesn’t let liberals off the hook, however. After being shown false information about Chief Justice John Roberts, liberal disapproval of him rose, but upon seeing a refutation of the false information liberals disapproval didn’t drop down to the pre-study levels. In other words there’s a tendency for mud to stick. This explains the success of negative advertising — it works. And the trouble with the part of the study I quoted above is that a refutation of negative advertising only makes things worse — if your audience is conservative:

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.”

I obviously can’t see what conservatives do inside their heads, but in comments on Digg and other news sources what I see is that when irrefutable evidence is put forward showing wrong-doing by a republican, a typical conservative response is simply to dismiss the source as “biased.” Since the media is now “the liberal media” that means that conservative can dismissed anything that harms the republican cause without having to examine their existing beliefs. And the “fact” that a “biased liberal media” is out to get their candidate only reinforces the view they have of their own rightness.

At a later date, as promised yesterday, I’ll deal with problems that I see with liberal thinking.

Update

From the comments section on the Huffington Post version of the WaPo article:

But there *is* a way to confront these people.

You have to assume that their sources are correct, and follow up with questions about what they have learned. When you do this, you are giving them the responsibility of informing, teaching you. This is a big responsibility, and when they realize that they do not have any good reason to think this way (i.e., they don’t have reliable sources), they become less confident in their assumptions.

The trick is that you have to *not* be an a-hole when you do this. You have to act like a little kid who always asks questions. You have to be willing to learn from them. Most people who live in these fantasy worlds live there because they’ve never been given the big responsibility of informing someone else on political issues.

Rid yourself of anything that could be mistaken as condescension, and ask them questions. They may ridicule you for not knowing this already, but ignore it. Remember that you’re not there to teach, you’re there to learn, and at some point, they may turn the tables and ask you a question. They may want to become the student, and that’s a good sign.

and

…asking questions is a great way to discuss things with people who are closed-minded and/or irrational. The key is to only ask simple questions without bias and never oppose their point of view because that would result in an argument at which point they’ll close their mind and become defensive. It really is like being a kid who always asks questions. Imagine yourself inside their point of view, ask questions about the parts you don’t understand, but remain within their point of view.

2 Responses to “More on conservative psychology”

1. Dassini says:

   September 20, 2008 at 2:34 pm

   This business about refutation strengthening convictions reminds me of something I saw recently. Richard Dawkins was talking to creationists about evolution versus the creationist stance and one woman was adamant that there was absolutely no scientific proof of evolution. At the time I didn’t get it, how could she hold that view? Bill Hicks liked to represent the idea that dinosaurs were put on the earth by God to test our faith….
2. bodhipaksa says:

   September 20, 2008 at 10:14 pm

   There’s just so much of that stuff over here that it’s bewildering. But there’s a whole culture of delusion with ready answers to help people dismiss evolution, and because they’re brought up steeped in that culture it’s not surprising that they do.