"Debunking Myths Can Backfire"

FactCheck.org wonders if debunking false and misleading claims does more harm than good:

Cognitive Science and FactCheck.org, or Why We (Still) Do What We Do, by Joe Miller, FactCheck.org: Have you heard about how Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet? What about how Iraq was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center? Or maybe the one about how George W. Bush has the lowest IQ of any U.S. president ever? Chances are pretty good that you might even believe one (or more) of these claims. And yet all three are false. At FactCheck.org our stock in trade is debunking these sorts of false or misleading political claims, so when the Washington Post told us that we might just be making things worse, it really made us stop and think.

A Sept. 4 article in the Post discussed several recent studies that all seemed to point to the same conclusion: Debunking myths can backfire because people tend to remember the myth but forget what the debunker said about it. As Hebrew University psychologist Ruth Mayo explained to the Post, “If you think 9/11 and Iraq, this is your association, this is what comes in your mind. Even if you say it is not true, you will eventually have this connection with Saddam Hussein and 9/11.” That leaves myth busters like us with a quandary: Could we, by exposing political malarkey, just be cementing it in voters’ minds? Are we contributing to the problem we hope to solve?

Possibly. Yet we think that what we do is still necessary. And we think the facts back us up.

The Post story wasn’t all that surprising to those who follow the findings of cognitive science research, which tells us much of our thinking happens just below the level of consciousness. The more times we hear two particular bits of information associated, for example, the more likely it is that we’ll recall those bits of information. This is how we learn multiplication tables – and why we still know the Big Mac jingle.

Our brains also take some surprising shortcuts. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Virginia Tech psychologist Kimberlee Weaver shows that the more easily we recall something the more likely we are to think of it as being true. It’s a useful shortcut since, typically, easily recalled information really is true. But combine this rule with the brain’s tendency to better remember bits of information that are repeated frequently, and we can run into trouble: We’re likely to believe anything we hear repeated frequently enough. At FactCheck.org we’ve noted how political spin-masters exploit this tendency ruthlessly, repeating dubious or false claims endlessly until, in the minds of many voters, they become true. Making matters worse, a study by Hebrew University's Mayo shows that people often forget “denial tags.” Thus many people who hear the phrase “Iraq does not possess WMDs” will remember “Iraq” and “possess WMDs” while forgetting the “does not” part.

The counter to this requires an understanding of how it is that the brain forms beliefs.

In 1641, French philosopher René Descartes suggested that the act of understanding an idea comes first; we accept the idea only after evaluating whether or not it rings true. Thirty-six years later, the Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza offered a very different account of belief formation. Spinoza proposed that understanding and believing happen simultaneously. We might come to reject something we held to be true after considering it more carefully, but belief happens prior to the examination. On Spinoza’s model, the brain forms beliefs automatically. Rejecting a belief requires a conscious act.

Unfortunately, not everyone bothers to examine the ideas they encounter. On the Cartesian model, that failure results in neither belief nor disbelief. But on the Spinozan model we end up with a lot of unexamined (and often false) convictions.

One might rightly wonder how a 17th-century philosophical dispute could possibly be relevant  to modern myth-busting. Interestingly, though, Harvard psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert designed a series of experiments aimed specifically at determining whether Descartes or Spinoza got it right. Gilbert’s verdict: Spinoza is the winner. People who fail to carry through the evaluation process are likely to believe whatever statements they read. Gilbert concludes that “[p]eople do have the power to assent, to reject, and to suspend their judgment, but only after they have believed the information to which they have been exposed.”

Gilbert’s studies show that, initially at least, we do believe everything we hear. But it’s equally obvious that we reject many of those beliefs, sometimes very quickly and other times only after considerable work. We may not be skeptical by nature, but we can nonetheless learn to be skeptical. Iowa State’s Gary Wells has shown that social interaction with those who have correct information is often sufficient to counter false views. Indeed, a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology by the University of Southern California’s Peter Kim shows that meeting a charge (regardless of its truth or falsity) with silence increases the chances that others will believe the claim. Giving false claims a free pass, in other words, is more likely to result in false beliefs (a notion with which 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, who didn’t immediately respond to accusations by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about his Vietnam record, is all too familiar).

So, yes, a big ad budget often trumps the truth, but that doesn’t mean we should go slumping off in existential despair. You see, the Spinozan model shows that we will believe whatever we hear only if the process of evaluating those beliefs is somehow short-circuited. Humans are not helpless automatons in the face of massive propaganda. We may initially believe whatever we hear, but we are fully capable of evaluating and rejecting beliefs that turn out not to be accurate. Our brains don’t do this naturally; maintaining a healthy skeptical attitude requires some conscious effort on our part. It also requires a basic understanding of logic – and it requires accurate information. That’s where this Web site comes in.

If busting myths has some bad consequences, allowing false information to flow unchecked is far worse. Facts are essential if we are to overcome our brain’s tendency to believe everything it hears. As a species, we’re still pretty new to that whole process. Aristotle invented logic just 2,500 years ago – a mere blink of the eye when compared with the 200,000 years we Homo sapiens relied on our brain’s reflex responses to avoid being eaten by lions. We still have a long way to go. Throw in a tsunami of ads and Internet bluster and the path gets even harder, which is why we’re delighted to find new allies at PolitiFact.com and the Washington Post’s FactChecker. We’ll continue to bring you the facts. And you can continue to use them wisely.

Sources:

Descartes, Rene. Principles of Philosophy. Tr. John Cottingham. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 [1644].

Gilbert, Daniel T., Romin W. Tafarodi and and Patrick S. Malone. "You Can't Not Believe Everything Your Read." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65.2 (1993): 221-233.

Kim, Peter H., et al. "Silence Speaks Volumes: The Effectiveness of Reticence in Comparison to Apology and Denial for Responding to Integrity- and Competence-Based Trust Violations. Journal of Applied Psychology 92.4 (2007): 893-908.

Mayo, Ruth, Yaacov Schul and Eugene Burnstein. "'I Am Not Guilty' vs. 'I Am Innocent': Successful Negation May Depend on the Schema Used for its Encoding." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 40.4 (2004): 433-449.

Spinoza, Baruch de. Ethics. Tr. Edwin Curley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 [1677].

Weaver, Kimberlee, et al. "Inferring the Popularity of an Opinion from its Familiarity: A Repetitive Voice Can Sound Like a Chorus." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92.5 (2007): 821-833.

Wright, E.F. and Gary L. Wells. "Does Group Discussion Attenuate the Dispositional Bias?" Journal of Applied Psychology 15 (1985): 531-546.

Comments

[Robert Edele]

Perhaps focusing on the purveyors of the falsehoods would be useful. If Karl Rove is inventing big lies about Iraq and 9/11, focus on how much of a liar he is and try to link the particular lie you're trying to debunk with the bigger picture (in this case, a lie for profit). It might be ad hominem (attacking the speaker), but in this case, the personality and credibility of the speaker (or more often, the media repeating the lie, since a speaker without media will only reach a few thousand at most) is the only thing going for the lie, so it does deserve to be attacked. Perhaps if people came to believe that the mass media are chronic liars, the spin and slander would be far less effective. Media are only effective if people tune in, and no one wants to listen to known liars.

[wjd123]

After hearing Bush say at a press conference that he had no credible evidence that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11 I decided to put it in all my post as a tag line in an effort to counteract his Administrations' conflating of the two.

When I went to look up Bush's exact words it appeared that he had mangled the syntax. Rather than put corrections into a tag line I regretfully abandoned the idea.

Now that I'm told that people may have skipped over the "no" I feel a bit better--at least about not using the tag line.

[Jim Harrison]

Same principle as the hamburger rule: if you ask for extra onions, you'll get tons of onions if the server likes onions and no onions at all if they don't because all that gets heard is "onions."

Chomsky won his argument with B.F. Skinner by showing that language could not be understood as a set of conditions responses, but Skinner was right for a lot of people a lot of the time. When we're tired, stressed, bored, or simply inundated with repeated messages, mere association takes over from syntax. There's no negation in the unconscious; and no ifs, ands, or buts on the news as it is habitually received.

[piglet]

"Perhaps if people came to believe that the mass media are chronic liars, the spin and slander would be far less effective."

But many people do - and the slander is still effective.

"Gilbert’s studies show that, initially at least, we do believe everything we hear."

I don't know what the study shows but it is clearly not true that we believe everything we hear. We do put it through an initial filter, based on our general set of beliefs, and on how we evaluate the authority and reliability of the source. If what we hear is inconsistent with our belief system, and/or we do not trust the source, then we will probably reject it without even thinking about it. The real question is how propagandists - for this is what we are discussing here, the effectiveness of propaganda - manage to make their lies (or distortions or however you prefer to call it) appear as consistent with most people's belief systems, so that they can be integrated and over time become an inseparable part of a whole network of mutually reinforcing beliefs. The weakness of the article, and of the whole fact checking enterprise, is that it discusses these beliefs as if they were isolated bits. But correcting false claims, each in isolation, isn't enough to counter propaganda.

[lonesome moderate]

I suspect that, if we could get Karl Rove into a hotel room and waterboard him until he spilled his guts, he would laugh when asked about this article's findings. Then he would say something like "boy, you guys are slow! We've been doing that for fifteen years!" Perhaps this why he chose to leave the White House when he did--he had become so well-known that Democrats could respond to White House attacks against him personally, as suggested by Robert Edele.

[lonesome moderate]

Perhaps if people came to believe that the mass media are chronic liars, the spin and slander would be far less effective. Media are only effective if people tune in, and no one wants to listen to known liars.

Given that the most popular "alternative" outlet for news is probably the Drudge Report, I'm not so sure that the mass media (to the extent that such a thing still exists) is the problem.

[calmo]

Lookit that: Descartes and even Spinoza. I'm expecting eva momentarily, you?
In the meantime...I like piglet's observation

But correcting false claims, each in isolation, isn't enough to counter propaganda.

...not sayin it's true or false yet (not anymore)...feelin somewhat ant-like this morning (no coffee is what duz it) and not too "ant-colony"...you recall that from a previous thread, people? (newbies could check the archives if 'Find' doesn't work in the current postings) Not that I'm waiting for direction from other ants who may be as hesitant (its just the coffee, people) as I am, but I'd hate to venture something and have it witlessly hit the bullseye...and then have to explain it, you know?
In the meantime, I also like Robert Edele's

Media are only effective if people tune in, and no one wants to listen to known liars.

which is why so much of the time I spend here is tuned for "entertainment" (not snear quotes, just nervous ones) because I know your time is precious (so I'm working towards fellow ant melvin and away from fellow ant Laffy) [But my current ineptness? coffee deprivation, people].
Ok, last thing before I plug the kettle in: this truth business which could be grounded (you philosophy buffs puff in anytime) in the writings of those ancients (don't you believe it!), is no longer anchored to particular statements or propositions. [We (very coffee deprived ants) no longer care about the truth of 'the cat is on the mat.'] We have moved on...to consolidated denouncement obligations associated with the ant colony.
Ok, you're right 'too cute', but dang I need my coffee!

[dissent]

I think it's not enough to debunk facts. I think it's important to create a story from the debunked facts: a story of being lied to.

That is the real story, after all.

[dissent]

Actually I didn't push it far enough. Being lied to repeatedly should be pushed into characterizing the liar as a liar.

The rightwing operates so often through character assassination. They need to be held accountable and undercut by having 1. their lies identified and 2. being identified as liars.

The latter point is important, because if you can plant it in people's brains, their subsequent lies will be less effective.

Liberals are too polite. Our national welfare is on the line here.

[me]

Debunking facts does not work because those that vote republican tend to be uneducated or just plain stupid. Don't believe me? Read "Deer Hunting With Jesus" by Joe Bageant.

[piglet]

Liberals are too polite.

Yes, and liberals also tend to hold their felow liberals to higher standards, which is extremely damaging. Liberals are quick to denounce Michael Moore's movies for their polemic character. It doesn't matter that nobody would watch them if they were not polemic in character.

They (specifically the Washington Post) have even fallen over Al Gore, happy to pick on every bit of information in his slide show that isn't totally beyond scientific dispute, as if such a level of accuracy could ever be achieved in a documentary on a complex, highly disputed and politicized scientific matter. Otoh I have seen self-described "fact-checkers", specifically at spinsanity.org, going out of their way to find excuses for Bush's many lies. No he didn't lie when he claimed there were WMD, he was simply misled by inaccurate intelligence. At least, we can't prove the opposite, and we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. No he never claimed outright that Saddam was behing 9/11. He only made insinuations. In that universe, when you call Bush a liar for having made demonstrably false statements, then YOU are the liar who is getting a beating by the "fact-checkers". I don't know whether the spinsanity guys are just right-wingers or whether their brains really function that way. But these episodes highlight the traps that the business of "fact-checking" in isolation will always fall into:

- Good liars know how to lie by technically telling the truth. If you only narrowly "check the facts", you risk missing the most dangerous lies, those told by the professionals.
- Rhetorical exaggeration and other stylistic devices are time-honoured ingredients of political discourse. They need to be understood in context. Exaggeration can be used to highlight the truth, or to distort it. Just think about how the Declaration of Independence uses exaggeration, and how the Founders would fare under the scrutiny of modern fact-checkers!
- It is extremely important to keep in mind that the government and other players in a position of power need to be held to higher standards, and need to be monitored more closely, than the rest. The propaganda they spread has a much more destructive potential than that of, say, oppositional fringe figures like Michael Moore. I think this observation is self-evident to journalists almost everywhere in the world, except in the US, where journalists seem to believe it is their role to report government lies even while knowing that they are lies.

[Robert Waldmann]

hey me
It may be true that Republicans tend to be stupid, but I know of no systematic study on that point (or any valid objective way to assess who is stupid). They are not, however, less educated than Democrats see Paul Krugman's blog
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/income-and-voting/
click on "since 1972" and scroll down to "EDUCATION". You will see that the most pro Democrats category is "not a high school graduate" and that, in most presidential elections the Republican share increases with education except people with post graduate education are more likely to vote Democratic than College graduates without post graduate education. The category "college graduate" (which means and no more than a BA) is the Republicans strongest category in all 5 presidential elections where people were asked that in exit polls.

Annenberg Fact check has an unfair and balanced approach. I have never heard or read the claim that George Bush has the lowest IQ of any President ever and I waste much of my life reading Bush bashing blogs. The 2 widely believed myths are Republican deceptions partly propagated with out and out lies. The people at Annenberg must have noticed this. They choose to make their story balanced by being unfair to Democrats ("fair or balanced ?" would be a good slogan for a real news organization if there were one in the USA).

Loansome Moderate, your comment is not the first time that it has been pointed out here that Karl Rove bases his strategy on this psychological phenomenon. It was pointed out by Mark Thoma with a link labeled "Karl Rove knows this."

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/09/links-for-20-11.html

which takes you to my blog post from 41 days ago.

http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com/2007/09/karl-rove-knows-this-federal-centers.html