How Partisan Hostility Leads People to Believe Falsehoods

One of the statements about Obama was that he is a socialist and one about Romney was that he believes Mormon Church leaders (Romney is Mormon) should play a defining role in national affairs.

Results showed that the more that any individual Republican in the study consumed conservative media outlets, the more that he or she disliked Obama and the more that he or she believed falsehoods about Obama.

There was no similar finding among Democrats who used liberal media, but Garrett cautions against making too much of that finding.

It is possible, for example, that the differences between Republicans and Democrats could be connected to the falsehoods chosen for this study.

The study of the 2016 election involved 625 respondents who were also interviewed three times during the course of the election season. But in this case, the researchers focused on just one issue in which partisans on both sides had closely matched misperceptions: Russian interference in the election.

Investigations at that time showed evidence of Russian hacking into email accounts of the Democratic Party, but there was no conclusive evidence one way or the other about any coordination with the Trump campaign.

The researchers asked participants if the investigation had confirmed coordination between Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign (a liberal falsehood) or confirmed no coordination (a conservative falsehood). They could also choose that there was no conclusive evidence at the time, which was the true statement.

The results were similar to the first study. Those who consumed more conservative media showed greater dislike than others of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and were more likely to believe the misperception that investigators had cleared Trump of coordination.

Again, there was no similar finding among those who consumed more news from liberal media outlets.

“The fact that we found the same difference between liberal media use and conservative media use in 2016 as we did in 2012 is provocative,” Garrett said.

“It merits more careful scrutiny. We think these results provide a useful step forward. But it would be a mistake to treat this issue as settled.”

Garrett said the study helps fill the void left when research showed that most people aren’t viewing only news that supports their side.

“We used to think that if we could just expose people to all the information out there, the truth would emerge. The problem is that we now have a lot of evidence that people don’t live in bubbles – they may consume more media from one side, but they aren’t avoiding everything else,” he said.

“Our results suggest an alternative reason why partisan media viewers believe misperceptions.”

The findings also suggest that partisan media can help promote belief in falsehoods about political opponents without even mentioning the misperceptions themselves.

“Encouraging hostility toward political opponents has the same effect,” Garrett said.