"Pluralistic Ignorance" in the United States of America

The editorial staff at the Bloomington Pantagraph writes:

You read it here first, so you should believe it

Sunday, September 23, 2007 11:01 PM CDT

Anyone who regularly reads Internet blogs, comments made after stories on www.pantagraph.com and even letters to the editor on this page has seen how many people can ardently, fervently believe something no matter how much contradictory information is available.

The old Mark Twain quotation that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes” may have been a humorous observation in his day but it’s deadly accurate in the era of the World Wide Web.

For those who are troubled by that, there’s no comfort in a recent study by University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz. He found that even when people are told by an authoritative source that something is not true, a large percentage of them will erroneously remember the false information as true. Worse, they will attribute the false information to the source that tried to debunk it.

A lot depends on what people hear first — the correct information or the myth, according to Schwarz and other researchers.

The situation would be almost comical if not for the serious implications.

Schwarz’s latest research involved a myth vs. fact flier distributed by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding the flu vaccine.

But such examples also have been witnesses— and most likely will continue to be seen — in political campaigns, whether it’s the issue of which candidate is “smarter” than the other or what a candidate did decades earlier while serving in a combat zone.

Political consultants are well aware of the phenomenon — confirmed by these researchers — that repetition leads more people to believe something, even if the repetition is from an unreliable source or involves individuals trying to debunk the information.

But ignoring a falsehood won’t make it go away.

In the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” category is research finding that failure to respond promptly to accusations leads many people to believe they are true.

Just ask unsuccessful presidential candidate John Kerry.

Therefore, whether you are the CDC or a political candidate, you have to do your best to get your message out and hope for the best. There is not a lot you can do about human nature.

But there is something we, as individuals, can do — and must do.

We can be careful consumers of information who read things carefully and consider the source or sources.

We respond:

Woodford Pundit wrote on Sep 24, 2007 7:22 AM:

The unfortunate side effect of this pervasive 'factual relativism" is the development of what some writers have termed "the decline of truth" in the U.S. and the fact that, despite any and all evidence to the contrary, a lot of people today think they are smarter and more knowledgeable than they objectively are proven to be.

This, in turn, has led to a feeling on these folks part that they are somehow "more special" than others and somehow "better" and should not have to abide by the rules and conditions of "the others" in society. ["The others" tending to be everyone but themselves.] When confronted with fact and reason they tend to shut/shout down discussion with, "deal with it" or "grow up", or with cries of "racist!"

The Pantagraph wisely avoids mentioning specific issues demonstrative of the "I's knows what I's knows and ain't no facts gonna make no difference" attitude. Empirical, evidential reasoning seems dead. The ancient Greeks must be turning over in their graves. Wait . . . you know they're not really dead . . . "We heard that in an email we got from an online blog we read (well, we looked at the pictures anyway . . . )."

Another article we were reading recently states:

". . . Sociologists call it pluralistic ignorance. It's this concept where reality applies to everybody but me," says Kevin Wehr, an assistant professor of sociology at California State University, Sacramento. "We justify things because we think we're better or different from other people. But, of course, we are not better than others. We are just as bad as the next folk."