Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
3 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,818 Year: 3,075/9,624 Month: 920/1,588 Week: 103/223 Day: 1/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Evidence based smear campaigns
Larni
Member (Idle past 164 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 1 of 49 (558857)
05-05-2010 6:45 AM


I found this article in the Guardian by Ben Goldacre (The Guardian, Saturday 1 May 2010) that essentially says that right wing people will strengthen their views as a result counter evidence to their position.
A new experiment published this month in the journal Political Behaviour sets out to examine the impact of corrections, and what they found was far more disturbing than they expected: far from changing peoples’ minds, if you are deeply entrenched in your views, a correction will only reinforce them.
Evidence based smear campaigns – Bad Science
This means that right wingers have very little chance of changing their minds; especially when provided with evidence to the contrary to their beliefs.
Is it then pointless arguing with right wing people because any evidence that is presented that is counter to their beliefs will actually strengthen them?

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by Apothecus, posted 05-05-2010 1:42 PM Larni has not replied
 Message 5 by Phage0070, posted 05-05-2010 2:18 PM Larni has replied
 Message 6 by slevesque, posted 05-05-2010 2:22 PM Larni has not replied
 Message 36 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-06-2010 9:46 AM Larni has not replied

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 2 of 49 (558895)
05-05-2010 12:40 PM


Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum
Thread copied here from the Evidence based smear campaigns thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Apothecus
Member (Idle past 2411 days)
Posts: 275
From: CA USA
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 3 of 49 (558912)
05-05-2010 1:42 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Larni
05-05-2010 6:45 AM


Hey Larni.
Crazy, just plain crazy. And sad, too.
Cognitive dissonance at its finest.
Is it then pointless arguing with right wing people because any evidence that is presented that is counter to their beliefs will actually strengthen them?
Yes, I think, up to a point. Like the study says, it depends upon where an individual lies on the scale of conservativity, regardless of intelligence, it seems. I'd assume, if given two people of the same level of conservatism but differing levels of education and/or intelligence, the more highly educated individual would be found to reject prior convictions versus his counterpart. In general, at least.
As I'm sure we've all seen (in this forum as well as in real life), rationality and reason seems to fall by the wayside in this, ah, subset of society. Pity.
Have a good one.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Larni, posted 05-05-2010 6:45 AM Larni has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 4 by Coyote, posted 05-05-2010 2:03 PM Apothecus has not replied

  
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2106 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


(1)
Message 4 of 49 (558916)
05-05-2010 2:03 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Apothecus
05-05-2010 1:42 PM


Stirring...
To stir the pot:
Try reasoning with the left wing fringe and they try to get you jailed (that hate speech nonsense).
If they don't riot and start breaking things (e.g., Santa Cruz, just a couple of days ago).
Dons flame suit.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 3 by Apothecus, posted 05-05-2010 1:42 PM Apothecus has not replied

  
Phage0070
Inactive Member


Message 5 of 49 (558918)
05-05-2010 2:18 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Larni
05-05-2010 6:45 AM


Trying to equate the effects of cognitive dissonance with "right wing" is incredibly dishonest; this behavior is common to all of humanity.
Observe for instance the reviews of the "Global Warming" studies used by the UN. The left wing reacted similarly by strengthening their support of the positions they had already taken, as opposed to examining the controversy around the studies and possibly revising their conclusions. It doesn't matter what your political leanings, we are all subject to this behavior.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Larni, posted 05-05-2010 6:45 AM Larni has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 9 by Modulous, posted 05-05-2010 3:16 PM Phage0070 has not replied
 Message 10 by Larni, posted 05-05-2010 3:21 PM Phage0070 has replied

  
slevesque
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 1456
Joined: 05-14-2009


Message 6 of 49 (558919)
05-05-2010 2:22 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Larni
05-05-2010 6:45 AM


I don't see how this shows the phenomenon applies only to right-wing people ...
I mean, this is what happened with the example of WMD in Iraq, which was obliously biased against more conservative people. But it does not show that doing the same thing with a reverse example aimed more at liberal and left people would not show the exact same thing.
Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by Larni, posted 05-05-2010 6:45 AM Larni has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by Apothecus, posted 05-05-2010 2:57 PM slevesque has replied
 Message 8 by Modulous, posted 05-05-2010 3:10 PM slevesque has replied

  
Apothecus
Member (Idle past 2411 days)
Posts: 275
From: CA USA
Joined: 01-05-2010


Message 7 of 49 (558924)
05-05-2010 2:57 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by slevesque
05-05-2010 2:22 PM


Hey Slevesque.
But it does not show that doing the same thing with a reverse example aimed more at liberal and left people would not show the exact same thing.
I'd agree that it may be that the more moderate (neither right nor left) a person is, the more likely she'll consider amending a position if that position was shown to be untenable. Seems like a fine assumption, anyway.
So, think of the most liberal friend you have. Can you illustrate a scenario in which this friend would exhibit the same characteristics as the "study" in question portrays for conservatism?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by slevesque, posted 05-05-2010 2:22 PM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 13 by slevesque, posted 05-05-2010 3:29 PM Apothecus has replied
 Message 37 by Hyroglyphx, posted 05-06-2010 10:03 AM Apothecus has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(1)
Message 8 of 49 (558927)
05-05-2010 3:10 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by slevesque
05-05-2010 2:22 PM


The left wing
I don't see how this shows the phenomenon applies only to right-wing people
If we accept the results, then it shows that the phenomenon is significantly more pronounced with those of the right wing. The full paper can be read here.
But it does not show that doing the same thing with a reverse example aimed more at liberal and left people would not show the exact same thing.
The paper refers to a misconception among the left wing about stem cell politics:
quote:
In the experiment, subjects read a mock news article attributed to either the New York Times or FoxNews.com that reported statements by Edwards and Kerry suggesting the existence of a stem cell research ban. In the treatment condition, a corrective paragraph was added to the end of the news story explaining that Bush’s policy does not limit privately funded stem cell research. The dependent variable is agreement that President Bush has banned stem cell research in the United States on a scale ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).
After doing their statistical stuff to it the result,
quote:
shows that the stem cell correction has a negative and statistically significant marginal effect on misperceptions among centrists and individuals to the right of center, but fails to significantly reduce misperceptions among those to the left of center. Thus, the correction works for conservatives and moderates, but not for liberals. In other words, while we do not find a backfire effect, the effect of the correction is again neutralized for the relevant ideological subgroup (liberals). This finding provides additional evidence that the effect of corrections is likely to be conditional on one’s political predispositions.
In standard English: In the right wing, seeing a correction to a position they held as true there is a tendency to agree with that position more strongly when asked about it. In the left wing seeing a correction has very little effect either way. That is - their bias prevents them from changing their views, but it doesn't cause them to say they agree with their view more strongly than before.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by slevesque, posted 05-05-2010 2:22 PM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 11 by slevesque, posted 05-05-2010 3:22 PM Modulous has replied
 Message 14 by Stile, posted 05-05-2010 3:31 PM Modulous has seen this message but not replied
 Message 26 by Trae, posted 05-05-2010 10:30 PM Modulous has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(1)
Message 9 of 49 (558928)
05-05-2010 3:16 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Phage0070
05-05-2010 2:18 PM


Observe for instance the reviews of the "Global Warming" studies used by the UN. The left wing reacted similarly by strengthening their support of the positions they had already taken, as opposed to examining the controversy around the studies and possibly revising their conclusions. It doesn't matter what your political leanings, we are all subject to this behavior.
This isn't like getting defensive. This is something different. So it goes that if you present a left wing person with a counter piece of evidence for Global Warming and then ask them how strongly they agree that Global Warming is occurring and humans are a cause you will find the same results if you didn't start with the counterevidence. The counterevidence has no effect on reported strength of agreement. For example.
In the right wing, seeing counter evidence to a position you hold increases the magnitude of your reported agreement with it!
This is not cognitive dissonance. This, if the results are to be followed, suggests that there appears to a psychologically different reaction to people of different political viewpoints when presented with corrections.
As the paper concludes:
quote:
The experiments reported in this paper help us understand why factual misperceptions about politics are so persistent. We find that responses to corrections in mock news articles differ significantly according to subjects’ ideological views. As a result, the corrections fail to reduce misperceptions for the most committed participants. Even worse, they actually strengthen misperceptions among ideological subgroups in several cases. Additional results suggest that these conclusions are not specific to the Iraq war; not related to the salience of death; and not a reaction to the source of the correction...
It would also be helpful to test additional corrections of liberal misperceptions. Currently, all of our backfire results come from conservativesa finding that may provide support for the hypothesis that conservatives are especially dogmatic (Greenberg and Jonas 2003; Jost et al. 2003a, b). However, there is a great deal of evidence that liberals (e.g. the stem cell experiment above) and Democrats (e.g., Bartels 2002, pp. 133—137; Bullock 2007; Gerber and Huber 2010) also interpret factual information in ways that are consistent with their political predispositions. Without conducting more studies, it is impossible to determine if liberals and conservatives react to corrections differently.

The paper is consistent with that conclusion, but can't say that it is certain: only that corrections can cause 'backfire' reactions among the political extremes which helps explain the misconceptions that the public have.
Edited by Modulous, : added the paper's conclusion to clear up what might well be a liberal misconception about the paper's content

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by Phage0070, posted 05-05-2010 2:18 PM Phage0070 has not replied

  
Larni
Member (Idle past 164 days)
Posts: 4000
From: Liverpool
Joined: 09-16-2005


Message 10 of 49 (558929)
05-05-2010 3:21 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by Phage0070
05-05-2010 2:18 PM


It's not really cognitive dissonance.
What it means is that once a right winger makes up his their mind they will not change it: even when they are corrected they cleave to their original conclusions; evidence be damned.
Sticking to ones initial conclusions is indeed common to all people as selectively ignoring contradictory evidence but the interesting thing here is that right winger's belief in their erroneous conclusions are strengthened by contradictory evidence.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by Phage0070, posted 05-05-2010 2:18 PM Phage0070 has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by Phage0070, posted 05-05-2010 3:28 PM Larni has replied

  
slevesque
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 1456
Joined: 05-14-2009


Message 11 of 49 (558930)
05-05-2010 3:22 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Modulous
05-05-2010 3:10 PM


Re: The left wing
Hi,
The situations taken are hardly comparable. The Iraq was a natonwide discussion for easily over 2 years in the entire US, everyone had an opinion on it and everybody was ''brainwashed'' into their position depending on which news source they went to. There is huge background into this when the study is being made.
The stem cell research, and if Bush had banned it or not at the time, is hardly anything like that. At the most, it is a peripheral belief that can be easily discarded by anybody.
A reverse situation that would maybe be on the same scale would be the global warming issue, and the 'extra-added' information would have to be an official article contradicting the usual ALGore line of thinking of the left.
PS i'm not that knowledgeable on US politics, so I may be wrong.
Edited by slevesque, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Modulous, posted 05-05-2010 3:10 PM Modulous has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 15 by Modulous, posted 05-05-2010 3:34 PM slevesque has not replied

  
Phage0070
Inactive Member


(1)
Message 12 of 49 (558932)
05-05-2010 3:28 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Larni
05-05-2010 3:21 PM


Larni writes:
Sticking to ones initial conclusions is indeed common to all people as selectively ignoring contradictory evidence but the interesting thing here is that right winger's belief in their erroneous conclusions are strengthened by contradictory evidence.
What I am pointing out is that it dishonest of you to suggest such behavior is unique to "right wingers". You appear to be letting your prejudice get the better of you, and simply insulting an entire political ideology.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Larni, posted 05-05-2010 3:21 PM Larni has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 16 by Larni, posted 05-05-2010 3:36 PM Phage0070 has not replied

  
slevesque
Member (Idle past 4641 days)
Posts: 1456
Joined: 05-14-2009


Message 13 of 49 (558933)
05-05-2010 3:29 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by Apothecus
05-05-2010 2:57 PM


Well, for my part I can't imagine my conservative friends to have such a behavior. Maybe it's an american thing
You don't expect this behavior from anybody, this is what makes it surprising. ANd the fact that we didn't expect it from conservatives but it is there, suggests that you cannot come to the conclusion that liberals would not exhibit it also when placed in a similar situation (which I think no similar situation to the WMD-Iraq is present in the research)
Edited by slevesque, : Irak - -) Iraq thanks Dr.A

This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by Apothecus, posted 05-05-2010 2:57 PM Apothecus has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by Apothecus, posted 05-05-2010 10:01 PM slevesque has replied

  
Stile
Member
Posts: 4295
From: Ontario, Canada
Joined: 12-02-2004


Message 14 of 49 (558934)
05-05-2010 3:31 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by Modulous
05-05-2010 3:10 PM


Fear and training to be loud
Thanks for the clarification, Mod.
Modulous writes:
In the right wing, seeing a correction to a position they held as true there is a tendency to agree with that position more strongly when asked about it. In the left wing seeing a correction has very little effect either way. That is - their bias prevents them from changing their views, but it doesn't cause them to say they agree with their view more strongly than before.
The thing seen from both camps (bias preventing a change in view) is simply explained by a fear of being wrong.
Fear of Being Wrong exists in almost all people. Generally, it's backed by some very real fears (losing a job, livelihood, ability to support family...). However, that same Fear of Being Wrong when dealing with big fears seems to carry over and be just as imposing even when the fears are minimal (being "wrong on the internet").
So, if a Fear of Being Wrong imposes a bias to keep one's position. What is it that makes some people strengthen their position upon being shown a correction as opposed to simply continuing to hold that position?
I think Right Wing vs Left Wing is more of a correlation then a cause. But what would be the cause? My guess is that some folks learn that when they're loud... people listen, at least, they seem to while in front of the loud person. An outsider will see the loud-person as being a fool. However, from the perspective of the loud-person, if others cease their rebuttles... then they see it as a "win" and gain confidence in their position. Too many episodes like that in too many face-to-face situations while growing up... and the cycle can become ingrained.
The cycle turns into... if someone has an arguement against my position... get louder... then success.
I'm not sure if any of that made sense... just some ramblings.
Larni writes:
Is it then pointless arguing with right wing people because any evidence that is presented that is counter to their beliefs will actually strengthen them?
Regardless of why it may happen. It still happens, so to answer the question:
Yes. Arguing with someone like that would be pointless if your goal is to persuade that single person.
But no, in general, the goal is to persuade "others" or "as many as possible". In which case, arguing with such a "loud-mouth" will only bring others in to view what's going on... and outside observers tend to see things a bit more objectively and will tend to see the loud-mouth as the fool he's being.
So, no, it is not pointless. And, in fact, I think it's advantageous... as their loud demands will attact even more "potential converts" to the corrected position.
You can even see such things on this board. Like when someone comes to the board screaming about a PRATT. The PRATTs seem to attract more and more "newcomers" who get to see the PRATTs and judge them for themselves. Most judge such objectively and see the PRATTs for what they are... refuted idiocy. The original PRATT screamer may not have changed their position, but they have rang an alarm that brought many others... with most of them now understanding that the PRATT is refuted idiocy. As the saying goes "The Bible is the largest weapon that exists for creating atheists"... or something like that.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by Modulous, posted 05-05-2010 3:10 PM Modulous has seen this message but not replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


Message 15 of 49 (558936)
05-05-2010 3:34 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by slevesque
05-05-2010 3:22 PM


Re: The left wing
The situations taken are hardly comparable.
They are comparable. Not equal. But as I said up above - the paper isn't really concentrating on left vs right stuff and is only consistent with that conclusion.
A reverse situation that would maybe be on the same scale would be the global warming issue, and the 'extra-added' information would have to be an official article contradicting the usual ALGore line of thinking of the left.
Yeah - they only asked a few questions because of time constraints (they basically performed one study per question) and they put in a call for more liberal issue related questions to discover what backfire issues they might have (perhaps fishing for a grant a little there ).

This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by slevesque, posted 05-05-2010 3:22 PM slevesque has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024