A lot of time and effort has been spent correcting the falsehoods, lies, rumors and conspiracy theories promoted by politicians during this election — most notably by Donald J. Trump. Does it do any good? Or have we entered a “post-fact” age?
In some cases, research I have conducted with the political scientist Jason Reifler has found that correcting people’s false beliefs can be ineffective or, worse, make them cling to their views even more strongly.
However, other research we have done suggests that fact-checking can be effective. The political scientists Thomas Wood and Ethan Porter have also found corrective information is generally effective in reducing false beliefs, though the extent to which it is effective can depend on people’s political views.
The four of us decided to evaluate the effectiveness of corrective information in reducing misperceptions during this election. It has been a deeply polarized campaign in which matters of fact are routinely disputed, so finding an example of misinformation was not difficult. We chose Mr. Trump’s Republican convention speech in July, when he falsely suggested that violent crime in the United States had increased substantially. In reality, although violent crime increased somewhat in 2015 versus 2014, it remains significantly lower than in previous years.
Consistent with other polls, a Morning Consult poll of registered voters that we conducted showed that Americans do indeed tend to believe that crime is rising over time. Among people who weren’t exposed to any new information, 75 percent of Trump supporters said violent crime had increased in the last 10 years, while 18 percent said it had stayed about the same. Misperceptions about crime were less common, though still widespread, among Clinton supporters — 58 percent said crime was up over the last decade, and 23 percent said it was about the same.
More important, we found that correcting Mr. Trump’s message reduced the prevalence of false beliefs about long-term increases in crime. When respondents read a news article about Mr. Trump’s speech that included F.B.I. statistics indicating that crime had “fallen dramatically and consistently over time,” their misperceptions about crime declined compared with those who saw a version of the article that omitted corrective information (though misperceptions persisted among a sizable minority). Specifically, beliefs that crime had increased over the last 10 years declined among both Trump supporters (from 77 percent to 45 percent) and Clinton supporters (from 43 percent to 32 percent).
Encouragingly, we also found only partial evidence that questioning the validity of a correction can undermine its effects. We randomly showed some respondents alternate versions of the article that included real statements from Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, questioning the validity of official crime statistics and suggesting F.B.I. complicity in a pro-Clinton conspiracy. Beliefs in increased crime over the last decade declined from 77 percent to only 58 percent (rather than 45 percent) among Trump supporters in these cases.
Though some Trump supporters were willing to accept corrective information, their political views did affect how they reacted to the article. In this case, people’s predispositions seemed to affect not their beliefs about changes in crime itself, but their perceptions of the accuracy of crime data and the fairness of the article they’d read.
Only 15 percent of Trump backers who read the article quoting his speech without correction said it had a liberal bias, but 37 percent perceived bias when they saw the version with corrective information. Similarly, beliefs that crime statistics are “not very accurate” or “not at all accurate” increased from 16 percent to 36 percent when Trump supporters heard a correction and to 43 percent when they also read Mr. Manafort’s statement questioning the validity of the statistics. (Neither group of voters changed how favorably they viewed Mr. Trump in response to corrective information.)
Finally, we found that just being exposed to Mr. Trump’s message can increase the acceptance of corrective information among people who aren’t inclined to believe him. Clinton supporters who read the version of the article that simply quoted Mr. Trump’s speech actually reported lower levels of belief in rising violent crime than those who did not read about it, suggesting they used his position as a cue to move in the opposite direction. In some cases, then, misleading claims by a hated partisan messenger may produce more accurate beliefs in the opposition party. (A similar sort of apparent anti-Trump backlash has been observed in increasing Democratic opposition to a border wall, trust in the American electoral system and feelings about Muslims.)
Despite all the hand-wringing, we do not seem to have entered a post-truth era. Sometimes people will change their minds about the facts. The question facing the country, then, is how to reduce not just the demand for false information, but the supply of it coming from politicians and the media.
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