Next up in the poli sci files: partisans can’t agree on basic facts … unless they are paid.
Researchers have demonstrated for years that peoples’ reporting of facts differs widely based on political affiliation. The classic example is that in 1988, Democrats were significantly less likely than Republicans to correctly answer whether inflation or unemployment went down under Reagan. Then, in the 90s, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to incorrectly state that WMDs were found in Iraq — particularly if they had just read an article expressing the contrary.
The original understanding of these fact/knowledge gaps was that liberals and conservatives each focus exclusively on their own media sources and simply don’t accept facts that differ from their beliefs.
Then another explanation emerged, suggesting that while partisans may know facts, they choose to say otherwise as a way of expressing their opinion about larger policy measures or partisan loyalty. In the words of Washington Post’s Dylan Matthews, “Partisans aren’t closed off from reality, by this theory. They’re just lying.”
So a team of political scientists set out to test the partisan-lairs theory through two experiments:
“In the first, they split respondents into two groups: Those in the control group were asked basic factual questions about politics; those in the treatment group were asked the same questions but were entered into a raffle for an Amazon gift card wherein their chances depended on how many questions they got right.
In the control group, the authors found… There are big partisan gaps in the accuracy of responses… For example, Republicans were likelier than Democrats to correctly state that U.S. casualties in Iraq fell from 2007 to 2008, and Democrats were likelier than Republicans to correctly state that unemployment and inflation rose under Bush’s presidency.
But when there was money on the line, the size of the gaps shrank by 55 percent. [Then the researchers] offered a smaller reward to those who answered “don’t know” rather than answering falsely. The partisan gaps narrowed by 80 percent.”
When no money was offered, Democrats’ estimated that the change in unemployment under Bush was nearly a full point higher than Republicans’. But when answers were rewarded for accuracy, the gap shrank to 0.4 points, and when “don’t knows” were rewarded, the gap shrank to 0.2 points.
The conclusion: small payments for correct and “don’t know” responses significantly reduce the gap between partisans when answering factual questions.
The authors conclude that false answers are mostly just cheap talk, not ignorance of facts, and are used to “signal a party affiliation.”
In other words, Republicans and Democrats don’t really perceive different realities. They just talk like they do.
Karen Cyphers, PhD, is a public policy consultant, researcher, and mother to three daughters.
