Forget Fact-Checking

As I read what used to be called the funny papers — which was actually the news section of a newspaper, not the comics — I continually wonder how people come up with viewpoints that are based on misinformation that is completely different than the facts warrant. I probably wouldn’t worry so much about it if it didn’t matter so much, but since I like being in a democracy and since voting is so important to that and since whatever passes for information influences voters, I do. I worry even more when I hear politicians complain that people would understand their point of view if they “just knew the facts.” To that I respond with the advice that facts seem to be your enemy.

I don’t like to believe that, especially because one of the great founders of our democracy, not to mention one of the world’s great thinkers, believed that people will make the right decision if they are informed on a subject. That was Thomas Jefferson, and I wish he had been right, but to give him his due, governments at that time were run by extremely well-educated people who didn’t let less-educated people run government — or vote.

There have been studies performed that have confirmed the most dismal viewpoints possible, namely that when misinformed people are given information by which a supposedly rational person could see that they were mistaken, they become even surer that their original opinion is correct. I remembered reading about one of these studies a few years ago, so I looked the topic up on the Internet and found several studies cited in a 2010 Boston Globe story. It didn’t do a lot to cheer me up.

However people get their opinions, they like them and will defend them to the death, irrespective of political persuasion. People, the article says, form their opinions based upon their beliefs and then look for facts that agree with their opinions and discard those that don’t. Researchers have conducted experiments in which people are asked their opinions on topics such as immigration, gun control, welfare, and other topics that lend themselves to strongly held partisan views. They are then presented with a factual news story that contains accurate information on the topic which contradicts a fact or facts in their opinion. Nice try, but it does nothing to change opinions, and by being challenged in their opinion they cling to it even more tenaciously.

It’s sad, but true, that most of us Americans lack even a basic knowledge of how our government works. The article quotes Princeton University’s Larry M. Bartels, who said in 1996, “the political ignorance of the American voter is one of the best documented data in political science.”

But before jumping to the conclusion that only the politically uninformed are subject to ignoring facts that contradict their views, note that this phenomenon occurs also in people who are politically “sophisticated” and the more sophisticated they are, the more strongly they reject contradictory information.

Of course, the most logical solution might seem to be giving people the correct information in the first place, before they have decided on an opinion, but good luck with that. When we are inundated with “information” from self-styled people of wisdom, a fact gets buried in rhetoric. This has been called “brainwashing,” and is best described by the expression, “repetition is truth.” I am not optimistic about our future.

Jim Elliott served 16 years in the Montana Legislature as a state representative and state senator.