The connection between reason, information, and political ideology

The Washington Post has a story about a recent experiment conducted by two political scientists:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

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.

(You can read some more commentary about this article at Mother Jones, and find a link to the study)

This study adds to another recent finding in Larry Bartels' new book, Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton University Press, 2008). Among the many interesting findings in Bartels' new book, he found using survey data that perceptions of growing economic inequality in the United States over the last twenty years were far different among liberals and conservatives. Not particularly surprising on the face of it, but he also found that political information had a substantially different effect among liberals and conservatives. The income gap between the rich and the poor in the U.S. has increased over the last twenty years, this isn't a debatable fact. But, Bartels found that among liberals, they were increasingly likely to recognize increasing economic inequality as they became more politically informed. Among the least informed liberals involved in the survey, about 70% recognized that inequality had increased, compared to 80% of the least informed conservatives. Among the most informed liberals, about 95% recognized that income inequality had increased, compared to about 60% of the most informed conservatives.

Am I really surprised by these findings? Not particularly. But it is still pretty disheartening that the likelihood of rational debate and reasonable compromise between liberals and conservatives, especially at the elite level, is pretty unlikely given that factual evidence has no impact on the most die-hard conservatives. If you combine these findings with other research that demonstrates ideological polarization between liberals and conservatives (or Democrats and Republicans) has also increased since the 1980s, especially at the elite level, the implications for the quality of public debate and public policy in this country are downright depressing.

Ugh

This may in fact be the single stupidest thing I have ever read.

Kathleen Murphy slams on movie critics for actually, you know, thinking about movies and writing about what they love. Instead, they are supposed to mirror the general opinion and reaffirm whatever the public goes to see.

There are really so many choices for the worst part of this article. One great moment is when Murphy slams on movie critics for talking about old directors like Fritz Lang and then lists some of his movies. Oh, how ironic and cute!

But I think the low point is this:

Apologizing for his preference for Cinemah over popcorn movies, highbrow New York Times critic A.O. Scott actually had the nads to claim that he's doing us a favor by sharing the "pleasure, wonder and surprise we associate with art."
Don't bother beaming us up, Scotty. What we crave is consensus, write-ups that mirror the majority, the movie tastes of the teens and proles who rule the box office.

I feel like offering Murphy a copy of Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. Because this piece is a perfect example of American anti-intellectualism. Not only is she opposed to what film critics say, she's opposed to anything that doesn't affirm the majority as she defines it. This article almost could only have been written in this country.

God Bless America.