Ideology Trumps Facts
Misinformation September 25th, 2008Participants were shown news reports that contained inaccuracies, followed by a correction. The news reports were not real, but were presented to the volunteers as coming from either the New York Times or Fox News. Again, the findings suggest that facts that contradicted political ideology were simply not taken in; if anything, challenging misbelief with fact checking has the counterintuitive effect of reinforcing that misbelief. Ars Technica
September 25th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Interesting.
Considering that belief can be fact-independent though can there be such a thing as misbelief?
Sorry (very picky). I guess you mean non-fact-based-belief and therefore in the paradigm of factual verification you could call it misplaced-belief.
Very interesting article though. Reinforces my thoughts on the matter. Scary also when we consider its more extreme ramifications in society as a whole.
Example: A large minority of American voters (Democrat and Republican) still believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, irrespective of ‘facts’ to the contrary. According to an article I read recently in the International Herald Tribune this is likely to be because it is easier to publicly display prejudicial opinions against Islam in post 9/11 America than it is to express racial prejudice in the civil rights era.