The Power of Political Misinformation

The Power of Political Misinformation..

Given all of the Misinformation we ahve seen here on ATS concerning the 2008 election I found this information relevant and fascinating!

IT WORKS! EVEN AFTER THE MISINFORMATION is debunked..

In fact people even believe disinformation MORE WHEN IT HAS BEEN DEBUNKED!

In a recent study..

a series of new experiments show that misinformation can exercise a ghostly influence on people's minds after it has been debunked -- even among people who recognize it as misinformation. In some cases, CORRECTING MISINFORMATION SERVES to INCREASE THE POWER OF BAD INFORMATION.

In experiments conducted by political scientist John Bullock at Yale University, volunteers were given various items of political misinformation from real life.

.....
A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

Once the claim was THOROUGHLY REFUTED...the percentage of people who believed the original debunked claim DOUBLED!

Ditto for Democrats...

Bullock found a similar effect when it came to misinformation about abuses at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Volunteers were shown a Newsweek report that suggested a Koran had been flushed down a toilet, followed by a retraction by the magazine. Where 56 percent of Democrats had disapproved of detainee treatment before they were misinformed about the Koran incident, 78 percent disapproved afterward. Upon hearing the refutation, Democratic disapproval dropped back only to 68 percent -- showing that misinformation continued to affect the attitudes of Democrats even after they knew the information was false.

NPR Audio program...Incredible! Well worth the listen..
www.npr.org...

Below is the link to the article in the washingtom post....

www.washingtonpost.com...

[edit on 22-9-2008 by maybereal11]

[edit on 22-9-2008 by maybereal11]

maybereal... wow... very star-worthy... this is simply mind-blowing.
Explains alot, why we are in such a mess/crisis... financially and morally.

I think Stephen Hawking explained in a nut shell when he said ...
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge"

Over at the 911 conspiracy forum i have noticed a similar peculiar play on people's positions. I keep seeing a combination punch to people's intellect that effectively reduces ones perspective to a very limited understanding of reality.
Essentially turning off one's ability to think freely/critically and thus encourages one to nod their head, parrot a scripted story and go out of one's way to support it.
The use of Doublespeak to detrail Occam's Razor

You many or may not agree with one position or the other in the debate at hand, but i think you'll find it interesting to note how powerful the twisting of meaning in the use of words can have on one's point of view. Certainly we can readily find examples of this throughout the discussion of all conversational taboos... politics, religion, sex and drugs.

It's really a shame, for it's those topics that are the most important to talk about, people avoid. The image of the 3 monkeys comes to mind... when i think of the proverbial saying "see no evil, hear no evil & speak no evil". Not that these issues are inherently disruptive to civil debate but because there is so much misinfo surround each.

[edit on 23-9-2008 by The All Seeing I]