Politics again - Facts dont matter

[Sebastiaan56]

Ive just come across this fascinating article of research from America on voter behaviour and their responses to changing situations. Essentially facts have a backfire effect which means that when presented with the facts people are more likely to maintain their opinions rather than have them change.

See here How facts backfire - The Boston Globe

Leads to a whole discussion about who informs opinion and how opinion can be manipulated to serve political ends. Of course Donald Rumsfeld was not the first to discover this (remember the "You will believe what we tell you" speech), all of the great tyrants have used this strategy and it seems all our pollies do it as well.

For communal erudition and comment.

[jimbur]

Remember the novel, "The 480" by Burdick? That was published in 1964 and used the premise that there all voters can be placed in one of 480 groups. Since then there seems to have been a general dumbing down so perhaps the title would have to change.
Damn, I wasn't going to get involved in another political thread
Jim

[jimbur]

A point to consider is whether an Australian newspaper would publish an article of that length instead of just an attention grabbing headline.
William Shirer notes a similar problem in his Berlin Diary when he tries to reason with otherwise intelligent people about what the fuhrer said. They heard what they wanted to hear and became confused when he confronted them with the facts. As the war didn't end at that stage, I assume they didn't believe him.
Cheers,
Jim

[More_Firewood]

An interesting variation on the same them is:

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize their mistakes"

Dunning?Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Sebastiaan56]

Damn, I wasn't going to get involved in another political thread

My pleasure Jim

Seriously though it puts most of what passes for political debate into perspective. The "L"s fight basically for a swinging vote which from memory is about 8% of the electorate (correct me someone, Im getting older). Now I dont know if this means that only 8% of the electorate think and look at the facts..... but yes its another way of expressing The Dunning–Kruger Effect. Cognitive dissonance has a lot to answer for.

[jimbur]

It gets even more confusing when people believe the facts but.... For example, they believe that car use will increase global warming but they don't want to walk to the railway station.
You're a sadist Sebastiaan.
Jim

[Sebastiaan56]

Or they see the 3000 boat people last year and imagine there is a crisis. The annual immigration intake is currently 300,000. During Howard's reign the population of Australia increased by more than 3 million (12.5%) the most of any government ever.

[jimbur]

Now that's a point - the acceptance of putative crises that is. Do people like to feel they are at risk especially when someone promises to save them and, if so, have all the doom-laden headlines of the world's troubles made them feel left out? The media loves disasters and so apparently does their audience. Chicken or egg?
I think it's mental displacement activity, not seeing the elephant in the room.
Cheers,
Jim

[damian]

Is it 300000 a year ? I thought it was about 140000 now ? Not doubting you just curious where the number came from.

Governments are won and lost by the votes of swing voters in marginal seats. Some years back they were 8% of the population. It varies, but not by that much. Realise that I am not one of them because I have always voted for minor parties and indenpendants if I can. I bury the majors so far down my preferences my vote doesn't count (in the senate moreso than the lower house), and I live in safe coalition seat so it wouldn't matter anyway.

They (swing voters in marginals) profile pretty consistently. Typically mortgage belt, middle income. Don't pay attention to politics until the week prior to the election then they just decide who'll keep interest low and pork them up the most and they vote that way.

The last queensland state election was a textbook case. Anna Bligh basically said nothing until the last week. Lawrence Springborg shot his load and she came in for the kill at the last minute, splashed the pork around, promised the world, won the election, sold the state, sent taxes through the roof. And people were surprised...

All the complex political analysis is meaningless. Yes government stupidity annoyes people like us, but we really really don't count.

"In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds"

I've only read the first page and I have to go now. It occurres to me that given the low level of public trust in the media perhaps they reached with scepticism party because of the source.

[jimbur]

I agree we don't count. We can just wonder at those who do

[Sebastiaan56]

Damian,

I was requoting figures from RN breakfast a few days ago but the official numbers are here Australian Immigration Fact Sheet 2. Key Facts in Immigration my bad I think long term and 456's may have been included in the quoted figure. Here is a perspective paper from the Govt website Boat People, Illegal Migration and Asylum Seekers: in Perspective (Current Issues Brief 13 1999-2000), it quotes 3123 for 1999.

So how much has changed from the feudal days? food for thought,

[Claw Hama]

The facts??? what do they have to do with politics?? or the media for that matter??
Numbers, figures, just clay for political sculptors. They can make them look like anything they want.

[Greg Ward]

It is human nature to gabble.
We (women in particular) all like to have our chance to sprout our opinions and voice our thoughts, whether original or that of our favourite radio station.

The weather is the most likely topic, but it is difficult to become too emotional about today's sunny or rainy footpath and as most Australians live on or around the cost and in cities, the terrible toll the drought takes on our farming communities doesn't rate.

So, to vent our spleen, we have invented politics (and family relationships and bosses).

We are lucky with 3 tiers of government, that there will always be one that annoys us, so we will always have someone to take the brunt of our anger so that we don't take it out on the kids.

Politics is the great saviour that holds our communities together, so we don't all kill each other.

Greg

[jimbur]

Greg, that's the only sensible argument I've heard for not putting them all against the wall.
You're not a pollie are you trying to save yourself?
Cheers,
Jim

[Sebastiaan56]

Politics is the great saviour that holds our communities together, so we don't all kill each other.