
Liberals and Conservatives Can Believe Fake News, but for Different Reasons - headalgorithm
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/liberals-and-conservatives-are-both-susceptible-to-fake-news-but-for-different-reasons/
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RickJWagner
I believe it. I've got friends on both sides of the political aisle. I can't
believe some of the stuff my friends think is true, and they think the same of
me sometimes.

I think confirmation bias is really strong. We're all best off if we take care
to ingest a balance of news. (One of my techniques: I read 'RealClearPolitics'
daily. It contains outrageous articles from both sides, which I hope gives me
a more balanced perspective.)

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MarkMc
I don't see how this study is valid. Participants were shown "unfavorable
stories [that] reported that the target was facing criminal charges". But is
it necessarily bias to think that Trump is more likely to commit criminal
behaviour before reading the story, and therefore more likely to think such a
story is true?

If I see a story that "an unseeded female tennis player beat the top-seeded
male tennis player" shouldn't I rate it less likely to be true than a story
with the genders reversed?

~~~
belorn
Because we actually have data and some scientific understand about gender
differences, that question is not very representative of bias. Change gender
with race like: "an unseeded white player beat the top-seeded African American
tennis player" \- Should you rate it less likely to be true if the race was
reversed?

Trump vs Obama becomes less a bias test the more factual information a
participant has. The test I can only guess assume that participants do not
actually have factual information about either president, thus all being equal
they should not have anything concrete to base a logic conclusion.

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bscphil
This is interesting, but I think it's important to note one thing.
Susceptibility to fake news != rate of believing fake news. This experiment
seems to have measured susceptibility.

>For instance, in the first study stories were either favorable or unfavorable
about either former President Barack Obama or current President Donald Trump.
Favorable stories reported that the target had donated $50 million of their
personal fortune to selected charities, while the unfavorable stories reported
that the target was facing criminal charges related to voter fraud in the 2016
Presidential election. Participants then made "legitimacy judgments" of each
story, rating how much they believed the story to be true, reliable, and
trustworthy.

I'm pretty left-wing, so my biases would presumably lead me to believe the
favorable story about Barack Obama, and disbelieve the favorable story about
Donald Trump. [1] How does that work out in practice? Well, at first glance it
seems pretty accurate. Trying my best to abstract away from the context of
this study, I'd give about 2% credence to the story about Trump, and maybe 35%
to the story about Obama (does Obama even have $50M of personal wealth?).
Hypothesis confirmed, right!? Not exactly.

It's true that I'm answering these questions according to my existing beliefs
about each politician. But those beliefs aren't _simply_ the result of "bias".
I came to those beliefs for reasons. For example, I know that Trump is
infamously stingy. [2] Him donating 50 million in personal wealth would be a
real shock to me, and for good reason. I know a bit less about Obama, but I
don't have a strong reason to think he's stingy, and I do vaguely recall some
news indicating that he has made a number of large charitable donations. [3]

So yes, both liberals' and conservatives' judgments are based on their
beliefs, and if you put those people in a position where they have to use
those beliefs to judge claims in the absence of other evidence, they are
liable to believe lies. But _one_ of these groups believes the truth - that
Obama is more charitable than Trump - and the other does not. In other words,
much of the liberal susceptibility to fake news can be explained simply by
pointing at the justifiably higher credence they have in many pro-liberal
stories.

[1] I'm relatively well informed, so I'd give ~0% credence to either story
about criminal charges. But if one of these stories were true, it would
probably be true about the person who's already under investigation for his
actions in the 2016 election.

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-boasts-of-
his-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-boasts-of-his-
philanthropy-but-his-giving-falls-short-of-his-
words/2016/10/29/b3c03106-9ac7-11e6-a0ed-ab0774c1eaa5_story.html)

[3]
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/02/06/obama-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/02/06/obama-
donated-over-1-million-to-charity-as-president-heres-where-the-money-went/)

~~~
tropo
Not that I think giving away stuff is a desirable qualification for the
presidency, but...

Trump provided his private plane to transport Andrew Ten, who had been refused
by commercial airlines due to complicated life-support equipment. Trump
provided Jennifer Hudson with a place to live after her family was murdered.
Trump has donated his entire presidential salary, to various causes, most
recently alcoholism research.

The big donor though is neither Obama nor Trump. It's Mitt Romney.

~~~
ncmncm
There is an active industry devoted to providing charity vehicles to help
launder bad reputations of extremely wealthy people.

Simple application of Goodhart's law.

