{"id":37368,"date":"2024-09-14T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=37368"},"modified":"2024-09-28T12:04:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T12:04:44","slug":"voters-moral-flexibility-helps-them-defend-politicians-misinformation-%e2%88%92-if-they-believe-the-inaccurate-info-speaks-to-a-larger-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/voters-moral-flexibility-helps-them-defend-politicians-misinformation-%e2%88%92-if-they-believe-the-inaccurate-info-speaks-to-a-larger-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"Voters\u2019 \u2018moral flexibility\u2019 helps them defend politicians\u2019 misinformation \u2212 if they believe the inaccurate info speaks to a larger truth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Minjae Kim<\/a>, Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders \u2013 even when they know it\u2019s factually inaccurate. According to our research<\/a>, voters often recognize when their parties\u2019 claims are not based on objective evidence. Yet they still respond positively, if they believe these inaccurate statements evoke a deeper, more important \u201ctruth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our team conducted a series of online surveys from 2018 to 2023 with over 3,900 American voters. These surveys were designed to elicit responses about how they evaluated political statements from several politicians, even when they recognized those statements as factually inaccurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider former President Donald Trump\u2019s claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Even among supporters who recognized that his claims about fraud were not grounded in objective evidence<\/a>, we found that they were more likely to see these allegations as important for \u201cAmerican priorities\u201d: for example, they believe the political system is illegitimate and stacked against their interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same logic applies to factually inaccurate statements about COVID-19 vaccinations<\/a> that President Joe Biden made, suggesting that vaccinated people could not spread the disease<\/a>. In our surveys, voters who supported the president saw the statement as important for American priorities, despite recognizing its factual inaccuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through these questions, we were able to uncover the criteria that guide voter behavior, depending on who makes which statement. Voters from both parties cared more about \u201cmoral truth\u201d when they were evaluating a politician they liked. When evaluating a politician they didn\u2019t like, on the other hand, voters relied more on strict factuality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our surveys documented how voters provide such justifications for their partisan standard-bearers, revealing a significant degree of \u201cmoral flexibility\u201d in voters\u2019 political judgment. I conducted this research with Oliver Hahl<\/a> of Carnegie Mellon University, Ethan Poskanzer<\/a> of the University of Colorado, and Ezra Zuckerman Sivan<\/a> of MIT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why it matters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Conversations about how to combat misinformation often focus on the need for better fact-checking and education. However, our discovery illustrates the deeper but overlooked drivers behind voters\u2019 tolerance and support for factually inaccurate statements. The findings suggest that misinformation survives not only due to voters\u2019 \u201cgullibility\u201d but their moral calculations about whether partisan ends justify the means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If voters are deliberately choosing to support misinformation because it aligns with their partisan perspectives, then providing factual corrections will not be enough to protect the democratic norm of grounding public policies in objective facts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What still isn\u2019t known<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our research leaves critical questions about how to combat such moral flexibility and its consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, we do not see such moral flexibility as categorically wrong. As a society, for instance, we tend to think that telling kids that Santa Claus exists is unproblematic, because doing so protects certain values \u2013 such as children\u2019s innocence and imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when it comes to public debate on an issue that should be based on objective evidence, moral flexibility limits the extent to which partisan groups can come to an agreement about facts, let alone what policy to derive from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s next<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What can pull people on opposite sides of the political spectrum to cooperate with one another, if they cannot agree on what is factually correct?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are likely more areas where partisan voters do agree with one another than the \u201cculture war\u201d narrative implies \u2013 and we hope to learn from them. In work in progress with sociologist Sang Won Han<\/a>, we are studying lawmakers who frequently co-sponsor bills with politicians in the opposite party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sociologists Daniel DellaPosta<\/a>, Liam Essig<\/a> and I are also researching what contributes to politicians\u2019 polarization in situations where opposite partisan voters actually do share a consensus. For example, a majority of both Democratic and Republican voters support background checks<\/a> for gun purchases, while bills for such measures consistently fail to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Research Brief<\/a> is a short take on interesting academic work.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Minjae Kim<\/a>, Assistant Professor of Management, Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minjae Kim, Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University Many voters are willing to accept misinformation from political leaders \u2013 even when they know it\u2019s factually inaccurate. According to our research, voters often recognize when their parties\u2019 claims are not based on objective evidence. Yet they still respond positively, if they believe these inaccurate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":37369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[46,295,296,36,4,38],"tags":[7689,479,7319,885,891,886,860,4275,4247,7962],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37368"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37368"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37370,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37368\/revisions\/37370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}