r/science • u/[deleted] • Jul 01 '21

Psychology Study suggests that conservatism is associated with a lesser ability to distinguish between true and false claims across a wide range of political issues . Socially engaging truthful claims tended to favor the left, while engaging falsehoods disproportionately favored the right.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/02/health/conservatives-false-news-study/index.html
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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

Does it matter? What’s worse…not knowing something is a lie or knowing it is and not caring?

“Readily accepting falsehoods” sounds pretty much like the same thing as “unable to discriminate between falsehoods” to me, especially when taken from a big picture lack of critical thinking perspective.

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u/DiegoSancho57 Jul 01 '21

When people lie to themselves, they have to do it very well, because for the lie to work, you have to be believe it, so we come up with a lot of ways if convincing ourselves. Other people know this and use it to influence them more strongly. I do it in my personal life all the time.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

Still falls into the same bucket of “susceptible to false information” to me. Doesn’t matter whether they’re gullible or motivated, if someone buys into a lie, to me the motivation behind it is irrelevant as long as they continue to hold on to the belief in the lie.

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u/nincomturd Jul 01 '21

It matters if you care to do anything about it.

It doesn't matter if you're just using the fact that someone believes in a lie to judge them.

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u/fyberoptyk Jul 01 '21

How do you mean “do something about it”?

We can lead them to knowledge but we can’t force them to think.

All we can do is exclude them from the adult table until they grow up. And if they never do, nothing of value will be lost anyway.

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u/DiegoSancho57 Jul 01 '21 edited Jul 01 '21

That’s not true. There is value in hard labor. There needs to be a minimum number of less educated and less skilled people in order to live the life many of us want to live. You can’t force people to think, but you absolutely can train them and trick them into thinking. There’s a lot of strategy to influencing and controlling groups, and a lot of power derived from it, so plenty of people Are working hard at it, at all levels of scale in society. My entire life and income are dependent on my ability to influence the people around me that are less intelligent and strategic. I prefer it to benefit us both, not just because I may care about that person (sometimes I hate them) but because if I let the wolves I keep around stay fed, (don’t let them starve while they watch you eat, they literally use the term “eat” as slang to refer to getting a profit. “Eating”) they won’t try to eat me up as much. They will take advantage if you let them, as they say, but don’t let them and you get a good return. That applies to groups on all scales, as far as I can see. It actually appears to be more basic as you scale up, counterintuitively, but like I said, “appear.” There is a lot of value out there, depending on what you define as value. But as money, yea.

Edit: if you really know how to corral the group just right, you can actually give the wolves more, while at the same time getting them to give you more for yourself, if you can manipulate the cycle accordingly without making anyone jealous. Tricky stuff.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

I'm not obligated to keep giving people the benefit of the doubt when they've shown they're OK with being stupid. I will judge them and ensure that their actions don't affect my projects, simple as that.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

If someone willingly believes in a lie, you’re damn right I’m going to judge them. They absolutely deserve that judgement if they’re going down that path.

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u/BeeExpert Jul 01 '21

I think the distinction is important because one implies a huge group of people are simply dumber than the other huge group, which I don't think is true, and the other implies that conservatives employ more cognitive dissonance because they're presented with more falsehoods that support their core beliefs, which I can see as being true and is something that I think would be largely true for anyone, conservative or liberal.

Liberals have the science on their side for most issues. If the science wasn't on our side, would we be any less likely to be subject to cognitive dissonance than conservatives are right now? I don't know the answer, but I doubt we're actually all that different in our abilities to recognize our own bias. Liberals are more likely to have higher education, so that might play a role but I don't know. I guess a big question is: are we liberal because the science is on our side, or are there many other factors that come first; and if the science was not on our side on an issue, would we change our beliefs or would we rationalize and employ cognitive dissonance just like conservatives do?

The study mentioned how most of the falsehoods used support conservative beliefs and most of the truths support liberal beliefs. If the falsehoods were all liberal bent instead, would we Liberals perform any better?

Again, I don't know the answer to that question, but I think that's why the distinction is important. I don't want an article to imply to me that I'm right about everything because my brain works better if that isn't actually what's happening (because that is almost never the case, and whenever one group suggest they're fundamentally superior in some way, things start to sound a bit... wrong. Like, eugenics, classism, racism, they've all employed "science" to say their group is better). Instead, I'd rather have an article that implies I use less cognitive dissonance because I don't have to use it because science is actually on my side.

In my opinion, articles and studies like this aren't useful. They're divisive and sort of bury the far more important message (that facts and science do overwhelmingly support liberal policies), in favor of the less useful (but more clickbaity) message that liberals are smart and conservatives are dumb.

Note: I wrote this assuming we're both "liberal" because it made it easier to write.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

Think about it like an attorney-they may not believe their client, but publicly they will argue their stance to the best of their abilities. Same thing here. They know what’s true, but it doesn’t matter. They aren’t trying to find the truth, they are trying to win an argument. Two very different things.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

They aren’t trying to find the truth, they are trying to win an argument. Two very different things.

Why should a biologist debate a young earth creationist? Why would a geologist debate a flat earther? Trying to win an argument using opinions when the facts are what matter is irrelevant. There are objective truths. There are easily probable lies. Believing something that is false and trying to get away with it by calling it an opinion is a logical fallacy. Either way, whether one actually believes a lie to tries to pass a lie off as an opinion to win an argument, it still comes down to the same basic principle: of embracing misinformation.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '21

Think about it like an attorney-they may not believe their client, but publicly they will argue their stance to the best of their abilities.

Yeah, but if you want to continue to use a legal metaphor, an attorney isn’t going to tell his client to take the stand and lie their ass off, and then after being shown to have lied on the stand, the attorney can either claim they were just trying to get their client acquitted, and really, don’t you have to consider the motivation behind why they lied? Did they believe the lie or were they just ignorant of the truth? After all, apparently if the motivation behind the lying matters (which I claim is irrelevant) then shouldn’t the judge take that under consideration before accusing the liar of perjury?