Survey: Americans Are Happy to Buy Into Misinformation
Dec 31, 2016 2:27:29 GMT
kenskinner likes this
Post by ck4829 on Dec 31, 2016 2:27:29 GMT
Survey: Americans Are Happy to Buy Into Misinformation That Supports Their Own Agendas
Misinformation is seriously impacting the beliefs of Americans across the political spectrum—and with the scary proliferation of fake news, not to mention real news so awful we wish it were fake, that news doesn't exactly come as a surprise. But the extent to which people fall for it is a whole different story: A recent Economist/YouGov survery looking at American voters' beliefs in various political conspiracy theories has revealed just how much we're tricked by misinformation that supports our own agendas, and it's pretty shocking.
The main takeaway from the survey is that Americans accept false or unconfirmed information in droves, just so long as the info in question reaffirms their previously held agendas—a psychological phenomenon called "confirmation bias," where people tend to "seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence." The data implicates people across the political spectrum, although results indicate that Donald Trump voters are especially susceptible to the phenom.
Take the example of Pizzagate, the wild fake news story/conspiracy theory suggesting that leaked, coded emails revealed Hillary Clinton's role in a sex trafficking operation run out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. The survey found that nearly 50 percent of Trump voters still believe it, a consensus that comes even after the restaurant was targeted by a man with an assault rifle who searched the property for—and of course did not find—the alleged (read: made up) sex traffickers.
www.glamour.com/story/survey-americans-are-happy-to-buy-into-misinformation-that-supports-their-own-agendas
Misinformation is seriously impacting the beliefs of Americans across the political spectrum—and with the scary proliferation of fake news, not to mention real news so awful we wish it were fake, that news doesn't exactly come as a surprise. But the extent to which people fall for it is a whole different story: A recent Economist/YouGov survery looking at American voters' beliefs in various political conspiracy theories has revealed just how much we're tricked by misinformation that supports our own agendas, and it's pretty shocking.
The main takeaway from the survey is that Americans accept false or unconfirmed information in droves, just so long as the info in question reaffirms their previously held agendas—a psychological phenomenon called "confirmation bias," where people tend to "seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence." The data implicates people across the political spectrum, although results indicate that Donald Trump voters are especially susceptible to the phenom.
Take the example of Pizzagate, the wild fake news story/conspiracy theory suggesting that leaked, coded emails revealed Hillary Clinton's role in a sex trafficking operation run out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria. The survey found that nearly 50 percent of Trump voters still believe it, a consensus that comes even after the restaurant was targeted by a man with an assault rifle who searched the property for—and of course did not find—the alleged (read: made up) sex traffickers.
www.glamour.com/story/survey-americans-are-happy-to-buy-into-misinformation-that-supports-their-own-agendas
