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Conservatives actively want to believe only lies

A new study of online news in 2020 has produced some dramatic—if unsurprising—results about consumption of misinformation between conservatives and liberals. It's a little complicated so I've split it into multiple simpler charts. Here's the first one:

The top set of points shows raw exposure: it's what Google shows you when you perform a search. As you can see, it's about the same for everyone.

The middle set of points shows what users actively choose to follow. This is not the same for everyone: Republicans choose to follow much more partisan news than anyone else.

The bottom set of points shows overall engagement and is even more dramatic. Republicans are far more likely to actively engage with partisan news than either Democrats or Independents.

The next chart shows how this shakes out in a measure of unreliable news:

Among Republicans, high engagement goes hand-in-hand with unreliability. The result is this:

As before, the top set of lines is merely what Google initially presents. There's little difference between partisans. But the bottom set of lines shows what people actively engage with, and the differences could hardly be more stark. Republicans freely choose to engage with far more unreliable news than anyone else. They crave it and they seek it out, even when the original search produces perfectly reasonable results.

I showed the results here only for the 2020 wave of data, but the authors performed the same analysis in 2018 with much the same results:

The two waves of our study replicate the same finding: engagement outweighs exposure to partisan and unreliable news within Google Search....Our results highlight the role of user choice, rather than algorithmic curation, in driving such effects

Conservatives don't get passively fed misinformation. They choose it, eyes wide open. They want to believe lies and conspiracy theories from people like Donald Trump, and after they "do their research" the comforting lies are all that's left.

But what is it that makes the endless lies so comforting?

47 thoughts on “Conservatives actively want to believe only lies

  1. cld

    They're not interested in real life, they're interested in an aesthetic to control real life.

    The way they see conspiracies in everything except actual conspiracies, like pedophiles hiding under every rock but not in the church.

    It's hysterical denial that motivates and masks their anxiety, because without that they'd just have to believe what someone informed has said about something which leaves them feeling like an idiot, and, because they're the center of the universe, that can't be right. So they prefer to accept the word of anyone who can assure them received, accepted, opinion is wrong.

    Social conservatism is a medical issue and should be widely discussed as a medical issue.

    It's probably at least partly treatable if we approach it the way we approach addiction.

    1. Nickyjo

      I believe the original post and the above overstate the situation. These days democrats are a broader coalition. Beginning with the 1960s and leading to Trump, the GOP has stopped trying to repeal the New Deal and Great Society, even defending those programs. Their last gasp in this direction was Obamacare, repeal of which isn’t spoken about any more. Republicans will try to trim programs as best they can, but almost by default they have made the culture wars their centerpiece, and left policy behind. When “war on woke” is your battle cry, policy means little. The GOP has relatively little in the policy area to offer. The one big exception is on immigration, but even that debate under Trump and DeSantis has become culture war-ish. Flying migrants north is a political not a policy statement.

  2. jakewidman

    I'm not sure I get what the x-axis on the first chart represents. Are negative numbers more Democrat-leaning? Or what does negative partisanship mean? If negative means Democrat-leaning, does that imply that a basic Google search returns liberal-oriented results, as conservatives like to claim?

      1. Joel

        The X axes on all three plots are plainly labeled. The Y axes on the first two plots are also plainly labeled. The Y axis on the third plot is unlabeled, but Kevin explains it just below.

        1. jakewidman

          I can see that it's labeled, but what does it mean? What is "-0.10 Average news partisanship"? How can partisanship be less than 0?

            1. jakewidman

              If that's the case, I think the label should say so. (For that matter, why is left minus and right plus?) So then it is the case that unmodified Google searches return slightly left responses, no matter who you are. I'm not sure I buy that without more explanation of how the results were characterized.

              1. cld

                My guess would be that's an effect of some kind of hate speech filter.

                Conservatives are incapable of much before whatever they're saying is casually cultivating contempt and injury aimed at whoever they think they can most easily get away with injuring, because that really is their whole thing.

  3. zaphod

    Endless lies are comforting to them because they "prove" that it is the fault of some others that they haven't achieved their expected materialistic wealth and desires. Feeds anger, too.

  4. erwan

    But what is it that makes the endless lies so comforting?

    Simple: they comfort their vision of the world, so their usual fears, their self-righteousness, etc.

    Example: imagining that BLM has a point and that there is systemic racism would make them feel guilty, lose their confidence in the system, damage the very important idea for them that the world must stay ordered as it is, etc.

    So they need the partisan lies to maintain their vision of the world, in which they are the good guys.

    1. CAbornandbred

      "Example: imagining that BLM has a point and that there is systemic racism would make them feel guilty, lose their confidence in the system, damage the very important idea for them that the world must stay ordered as it is, etc."

      I don't see why a conservative would feel guilty. Unless they are completely without compassion (which by the way I think they are). More likely they believe they are the chosen one, the superior one, the one who by the natural order of things must be at the top of the heap - in all ways. Now that's a world view that takes a lot of selective viewing to keep the delusion alive.

      1. Austin

        I have no idea why they feel personally guilty either, but trust me they do. When you tell them facts like “slavery existed” or “black people weren’t allowed to live in many suburbs/attend many schools/fully participate in society until like 1970“ or “LGBT people have always existed” or “nobody in charge is standing outside all of the nation’s hundreds of thousands of public restrooms ready to check entrants’ genitalia,” they flip out and begin screaming that you’re making them feel bad and making them feel bad somehow violates their rights to remain blissfully ignorant of everything (even as they’re proudly stomping all over your rights). White heterosexual cisgender Christian fragility is very real.

        1. CAbornandbred

          Pretty pitiful isn't it. Poor little white heterosexual cisgender Christians can only feel good about themselves if they are shitting on everyone who isn't them.

          1. Rugosa53

            Yep. Being able - entitled by society - to shit on others with impunity is their proof that they are the special snowflakes who should be in charge.

  5. zic

    bias conformation is comforting. Challenging your assumptions is difficult and frightening. Embracing new information and changing your outlook takes courage.

  6. Dana Decker

    Regarding the first chart and the conclusion that "Republicans choose to follow much more partisan news than anyone else"

    Is there a correction for the "click-bait" level in the search results? Right-wing headlines usually are.

    Republicans *might* be more inclined to follow links (on any topic) than others. Where are the stats on that? And what's the distribution of Google results in terms of partisan-ness? If it's 1 partisan blue, 2 generic, 12 partisan red, that would explain the distribution of follows.

    Reading the Abstract doesn't illuminate. (paywalled). I can believe that Republicans behave in a manner that the study suggest, but not from what's presented in the chart.

  7. frankwilhoit

    "...But what is it that makes the endless lies so comforting?"

    I'm so glad you asked!

    The content of the lies breaks down into a constellation of appeals to infantile emotions, which manifest as expressions of sadism. "Violence" in the familiar, narrow sense of the word, to be sure; but also dishonesty for its own sake, which is a form of violence, and unaccountability, which is a form of dominance, which is a form of violence.

    This shows us that sadism is the cornerstone of infantility, and that, in turn, shows us that the motivation for the peasant (meaning low-population-density) approach to childrearing is to prevent maturation, specifically to freeze and cultivate revenge for the birth trauma.

  8. Joseph Harbin

    "But what is it that makes the endless lies so comforting?"

    Maybe it's the reverse of the Carl Sagan standard ("extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"). Extraordinarily wrong beliefs require extraordinary lies.

    We like to think our beliefs come out of the evidence we find, but often it's the other way around. Let's say you live in Trump country during a pandemic. You hear that people should be wearing masks, but most of the people you see everyday don't. It's not easy being a mask-wearer where people frown on that kind of thing. So you start reading there's controversy about masks. Maybe they don't work. Who needs 'em? Maybe the virus isn't really as bad as they say on the news? Maybe it's a hoax. So you don't wear a mask and you don't worry about it. Chances are, nothing too bad will happen. Even if you get the virus, which is just like the flu, you'll survive. Anybody tells you to wear a mask, you know they're full of it. You dig in your heels. You can't believe a million people died. They must be lying about that. You start believing nonsense, contradictions. One day, you're saying the virus is nothing. The next, it's all China's fault for releasing the virus and trying to kill us all.

    People are highly motivated to believe X, Y, and Z, regardless of the evidence, and there is an extremely well-funded and effective conservative media operation to provide mountains of evidence to back those beliefs. The more wrong the beliefs, the bigger the lies needed to keep their heads from exploding.

    1. Joseph Harbin

      Another point about the study: The preference of conservatives for lies and misinformation should (but probably won't) inform legit news organizations about their strategies to capture more conservatives. Those efforts will fail miserably, just as CNN's recent lurch to the right has. Conservatives aren't looking for conservative-friendly news. They want the lies & misinformation. They're not coming unless they get it, but you'll lose the rest of us in the exchange.

      1. Austin

        For some inexplicable reason, CNN, NYT et al are willing to make that trade, even as evidence mounts that the bluer counties have most of the nation’s disposable income to blow on advertiser’s products and services. Very weird and almost like it’s not all capitalism that determines what our media decides to emphasize vs de-emphasize in covering the news.

  9. Dave Viebrock

    It’s probably the same reason trump used MAGA as a slogan. Why would any of that crowd choose to have big picture thinking, empathy, or self-reflection? Those things take work and a tolerance for discomfort. They require not believing they’re Gods gift to the world. And I’ll wager it’s always been this way since science challenged religion hundreds of years ago. As Sagan wrote, “meteorology and microbiology can now explain what would’ve been reason to burn women to death 300 years ago”.

  10. rikisinkhole

    Kevin -- This is why your railing at Fox News and how horrible it is (even though it is) is pointless. Fox isn't just FEEDING lies to MAGA people, this show that they are affirmatively PURSUING lies and disinformation. Even without Fox, they would get it anyway.

    1. Yehouda

      Not that obvious.

      It works both ways: They look for lies, and Foxnews encourages them to look for and adopt lies. If Foxnews didn't exist, they had less encouragement.

      It is quote possible that instead of Foxnews you would have another corporation do the same, but it is not necessarily true.

  11. James B. Shearer

    This is silly. Conservatives have to seek out conservative leaning sites because the mainstream sites are mostly liberal leaning.

    1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

      The question here is not why conservatives seek out conservative sites. The question is why conservatives seek out *unreliable* conservative sites. Reliable conservative sites exist - The Economist, for example - but conservatives actively seek out far less reliable ones. See graphs 2 & 3.

      You might ask yourself why that is the case.

      1. James B. Shearer

        "You might ask yourself why that is the case."

        Once you realize that the liberal news media lies a lot it is tempting to over react and conclude that it is lying about everything.

        1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

          You still haven't explained why conservatives actively seek out *unreliable* news sources.
          A character in the film "Leap of Faith" rationalized a corrupt preacher by saying, "He tells fairy tales to people who thank him for it." That may be what the Daily Caller and Breitbart and all those ilk are doing. But why is there even an audience for it?

          1. James B. Shearer

            "You still haven't explained why conservatives actively seek out *unreliable* news sources."

            Just as one person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter" reliability can be in the eye of the beholder. Is Steve Sailer's blog a reliable source?

            The liberal news media have not only destroyed their own credibility they have damaged the idea that there are objective standards.

            As for seeking out sources that agree with your priors I doubt there is much difference overall between liberals and conservatives. Many people prefer to associate with like minded people and large groups aren't monolithic.

        2. ScentOfViolets

          You're the kid who doesn't know what distance is, right? So tell me why again I should be listening to you.

      2. James B. Shearer

        "...but conservatives actively seek out far less reliable ones. See graphs 2 & 3."

        I belatedly looked at graph 3 and it appears to say conservatives get about 4% of their news from unreliable sources as opposed to about 1.5% for liberals which doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

  12. cmayo

    I don't find this confusing in the slightest. A psychology 101 (or 102) understanding of groups and tribes, plus the knowledge that Republicans are more change-averse and less open-minded, makes this the most unsurprising set of charts I've ever seen. Group identity and confirmation bias have been fueling the right for decades now.

    I guess on the plus side, it provides data points to back up the anecdotal understanding. Maybe it's because I was a child in the 90s and saw it happening in real time while simultaneously lacking first-hand observation of the very end of the bipartisan era (it was clear to me in 1996 that bipartisanship was already a corpse), but this is completely obvious.

    It also tracks 100% with my mid-and late-2000s experience on Facebook as people my age became more comfortable flying their political colors and older folks started to join, as well as the experience of chain emails before then.

  13. lawnorder

    I think that the assertion that conservatives want to believe "only lies" is an overstatement. Conservatives want to believe things that they are comfortable with and disbelieve things they are uncomfortable with. For instance, for American conservatives the statement "the United States is the richest and most militarily powerful country on Earth" is both comforting and true, so in that case conservatives happily believe the truth.

    On the other hand, "Trump lost the 2020 election" is true but uncomfortable to a conservative, so they don't believe it. The conservative test of whether a given assertion of fact is true is, basically "do I want that to be true"? If they want it to be true, they believe it, and if they want it to be false they don't believe it. It's an EXTREMELY juvenile approach to the universe.

    1. Chondrite23

      Agreed. That Fox and their ilk peddle a lot of lies is a byproduct, not something they strive for, to my knowledge. The far right press is creating a scary world view. Whether it is true or not is not important. Perhaps falsehoods are cheaper. Also, if people believe whatever you peddle as the party line you have more flexibility to change the narrative. The right wing used to worry about global warming about as much as the rest of the population, then there was a concerted effort to make that not a Republican view and they followed along. Look at the current ranting against woke-ism and CRT teaching. That came out of nowhere. Most people don’t know what these are but Republicans know they are bad.

      What I’d be more interested in knowing is why Republican’s are so needy for this scary world-view that is being fed to them. There is something about this group that makes them suspicious about always being cheated. There always has to be some villain (Jews, immigrants, etc.) that is threatening them.

      It is probably not a simple thing, but the right wing media outlets and political advisors have this down to a science.

      1. cmayo

        Because the idea that some cabal or group of interests (coordinated or uncoordinated) controls the world, as opposed to it being a very noisy, chaotic, and random system, is much less scary than the truth - that the world is noisy, random, and chaotic.

        It's why people believe stupid shit like 9-11 was an inside job rather than a terrorist attack that was the culmination of a lot of factors (essentially, chaotic). When you think your life sucks or your relative power is decreasing (both of which are true in at least some sense), it's more comforting to believe that it's SOMEBODY's fault rather than That's Just How The World Is.

        Conservatives aren't hardasses. They just pretend to be.

  14. cephalopod

    One of the tenets of right-wing belief is a distrust of intellectual elites and experts: both academic and journalistic. This will make misinformation more appealing to them.

    There certainly is misinformation on the left, but it is harder to make it spread widely when the potential audience is going to have some cognitive dissonance when they read it. E.g. "I think big pharma is a bunch of greedy liars, but I respect the doctors and scientists who say vaccines are good."

  15. D_Ohrk_E1

    But what is it that makes the endless lies so comforting?

    Because that's the easiest way to resolve cognitive dissonance.

    AI-generated fake videos are coming at us in the 2024 election cycle and we won't be prepared for the level of misinfo/disinfo being spread on certain lightly moderated social media platforms.

    Those images will cement narratives of political operatives, even after being disproven, and the distortion reality field will be complete. What follows next may include violence by people who think they're saving the nation's soul.

  16. Yikes

    All you have to do is look at the issues most important to "conservatives" and its obvious. The conservative coalition is made up of separate groups who are losing in the battle to convince a majority of their policy or policies, but most likely policy (singular).

    If you are losing in the battle, you kid your self that it is some sort of fluke. The stolen election grift is just the most extreme example, but it is telling.

    But its all the way down the line. There is not really any argument that a certain amount of governmental regulation is necessary for the many issues as to which people can't simply be left to their own devices. I mean, there is an argument, but its as loser argument since you cannot come up with a single first world country which is an example of a deregulated libertarian paradise. You can come up with several second and third world countries, but that kinds of proves the argument is a loser.

    Yet, as you see in the current debt ceiling posturing, the "tear down big government" lie is strong with many. It has to be, otherwise you might as well admit that regulation is necessary and if you admit that then, well, you're not a MAGA, are you?

  17. benzx025

    it's called confirmation bias and Republicans have been conditioned by Republican operatives to utterly crave it.

  18. pjcamp1905

    Please.

    No one seeks out misinformation knowing that that is what it is. They believe it is NOT misinformation, just as the left believes anti vax propaganda is not misinformation. It is the truth that the mainstream media won't tell you.

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