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November 4

Looking for article about gullibility of conservatives

Today I came across a scholarly paper about how US conservatives are more susceptible to believing falsehoods than non-conservatives, and then to my surprise I found other reliable sources providing in-depthreporting on this phenomenon — enough sources to establish notability for the topic.

Because the studies have been out for a few years, I thought I'd find a Wikipedia article about it, but I can't find one. I would be surprised if it hasn't been written yet, so I suspect I'm searching for the wrong thing. Do we have such an article, or should I start drafting one? ~Anachronist (talk) 23:43, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It would be better to add such material to the Conservatism article itself, both to have it vetted by the community, and because it will get read a lot more there. That article already has a section on Psychology with subsections Conscientiousness, Disgust sensitivity, Authoritarianism, Ambiguity intolerance, Social dominance orientation, and Happiness. Abductive (reasoning) 03:59, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm. That's a broad-subject article, and this topic of gullibility seems to be restricted to the United States, not conservatives in general. ~Anachronist (talk) 15:29, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, we have a Conservatism in the United States article that you could consider. Nyttend (talk) 19:33, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's not even really traditional philosophical conservatives, it's conspiratorial populists (some would say pseudo-populists) who are inheritors of the traditions discussed in the classic book The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter. AnonMoos (talk) 17:51, 5 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This kind of studies is about:

First, finding out the correlation between level of conservativeness (of a person) and how (he or she is) susceptible to believing falsehoods. In the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States, it mentioned “American conservatism is a large and mainstream ideology in the Republican Party and nation”. But the ideology is not a single dimension concept, how to measure ideology is difficult and different ways to measure ideology may give different results. Moreover, it is even more difficult to measure believing. There are many existing scales to measure believing, but none of them is comprehensive. Also, the world is not black and white, it is difficult to measure falsehoods.

Second, establishing the causal relationship is also difficult. Given that you can successfully establish the correlation, how can you prove that the causality is not a reverse, i.e. people who are more susceptible to believing falsehoods tend to being conservatives.

Therefore, I doubt whether there is a credible scholarly paper about this topic. But I think if you can sort out the definition and measurement problems, and you can establish the causal relationship in a convincing way, it could be a good research. Stanleykswong (talk) 11:30, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I believe it will be much easier to find references discussing how political extremists (on both sides) are more gullible. It isn't just politics. Religious extremists are more gullible. Racists extremists are more gullible. Gender rights extremists are more gullible. My personal opinion is that being gullible leads to becoming an extremist, but I am sure thare are many cases of brainwashing that lead to gullibility. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a young man many years ago. It came up that he was a Marine and I said that he didn't talk or act like a Marine. He said that the Marine attitude is forced through standard brainwashing techniques in boot camp, but if you know what the methods are and you know they are being used on you, they aren't very effective. So, another way to phrase that is if you are not gullible about the situation you are in, brainwashing attempts by other extremeists are less effective. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 12:45, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with you that it is much easier to establish a link between extremists and gullibility. Also, brainwashing plays a key role. But I’m not sure what affects what. Are extremists more gullible or it is easier to turn gullible people into extremists? However, there is no doubt that brainwashing is an important moderating variable that affects the strength of the link between extremists and gullibility. Stanleykswong (talk) 13:59, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree with you that if a person knows about what brainwashing methods can be used on him/her, brainwashing will be less effective. The question is how to collect data for a robust scholarly research. Stanleykswong (talk) 14:02, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is outside my realm as a reference librarian. I can give observations. I have observed multiple times that many scientists do not consider psychology to be science because you cannot do proper scientific research. In this specific case, there is no scientific measure of gullibility. There is no scientific measure of extremism. First, you need multiple publications to agree to a metric of each one. Then, you can get data to work with. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 14:15, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Here is the study: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abf1234 ~Anachronist (talk) 15:06, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have been searching. I found opinion pieces. I don't trust those. I found multiple psychology articles that basically state that there is no correlation between being conservative and being biased (gullible) more than what is observed in liberals. There are more articles in recent times that tend to refer to modern politics as "post-truth." I haven't found anything remotely scientific. 68.187.174.155 (talk) 18:12, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Your comment is a reply to mine but it suggests that you didn't read the paper I linked. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:32, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The paper used a very interesting research method. Stanleykswong (talk) 18:47, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So, this topic has been an interest of mine for about 25 years, or at least since Gore lost the election to Bush. I've gone back and forth, sometimes agreeing with it, and other times disagreeing with it. Weighing all the available evidence, I am forced to conclude that this observation is probably not supported all that much. The real turning point for me was seeing how easily pandemic misinformation spread in liberal communities formerly associated with democrats, and the simple truth is that we all know gullible liberals who believe in crystal nonsense. So to conclude, this is not a problem endemic to conservatives, as much as I would like to personally believe it is. It's a problem unique to all of humanity. Think about it. Reagan won by a similar landslide in 1980, and you had millions of liberals who got suckered into his morning in America nonsense. Viriditas (talk) 09:50, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, gullibility is not a problem endemic to conservatives or democrats. This is a problem endemic to some people across the political spectrum.

I think studying how misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination contributes to people’s refusal of vaccination is a potential research topic. Finding the percentage of people who refused vaccination because of misinformation across different positions on the political spectrum will help us understand what kind of people are more gullible to misinformation. Stanleykswong (talk) 12:12, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw articles referring to it as a "Republican" disease, because more Republicans were dying from it than Democrats, Republicans were least likely to be vaccinated, and most likely to buy into the nonsense (which Trump helped promote) about "safer" alternatives and the conspiracies behind the vaccine. ~Anachronist (talk) 19:31, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's all true, but I think the reason was because conservatives have highly sophisticated information distribution networks, whereas Democrats have almost none except for mainstream media which tends to lean center to center right. And yes, more conservatives in red states died due to this disinformation network. But there was still a huge problem with liberal communities accepting and promulgating COVID-19 misinformation, and this was an active area of research when it came to a phenomenon known as conspirituality, liberal to left-wing communities that were targeted with right-wing propaganda. The number of articles describing this controversy in yoga communities, for example, is well worth the read. It's a fascinating subject that illustrates how disinformation and propaganda can infect any community. Here on Maui, we saw this happen in real time after the wildfires in 2023. The entire population of Hawaii was targeted by foreign state actors with disinformation accusing liberals and Democrats of "attacking" Maui to push Hawaiians out of their homes and promote green cities.[1] This disinformation was then intentionally echoed at the highest levels of the GOP, reinforcing the message that natural disasters are caused by liberals. Keep in mind, this is not a new thing. The GOP had been doing this for decades, often blaming devastating tornadoes on homosexuality and abortion.[2] When Tucker Carlson returned from his trip to Russia, he began using the same old playbook, blaming powerful US hurricanes on abortion, not climate change.[3] The thing that was different about the Hawaii wildfires, is that propaganda researchers traced much of the messaging to Chinese and Russian sites, who appeared to be working closely with members of the GOP in congress to coordinate their talking points. The idea that autocrats and authoritarians, particularly those who are part of BRIC countries, have infiltrated the Republican Party through Trump, the NRA,[4] and members of the larger Koch network and associated religious groups such as the Council for National Policy, is no longer a conspiracy theory, but well established. The US is just months away from dismantling NATO and becoming closer allies with Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China. If you tell conservatives this, they often have a response: "I'd rather be a Russian than a Democrat."[5] Viriditas (talk) 23:49, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don’t know the research method the article was using, but without a sound research method, for example using education, religion and gender as control variables, the term "Republican" disease may not be a fair statement. A proper study with valid and reliable findings needs to minimize biases and errors. It is likely that other factors, such as education, religion and gender make them more susceptible to misinformation and have a high chance to die of COVID-19. So a study to find out the influence of political spectrum on susceptibility to misinformation needs to “control” those factors. Stanleykswong (talk) 11:10, 10 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The thing about covid might be this--you'll have to judge its accuracy for yourself. Regarding gullibility and related ideas, this and this were interesting. I don't think they distinguished conservative vs other philosophies but it's been a while. This suggests political beliefs can be affected by toxoplasma infection. Not directly political, this suggests covid infection can cause personality changes that didn't sound nice. It reminded me of Phineas Gage. It cites a couple studies about Republicans getting more covid. That might have changed by now though. 2601:644:8581:75B0:0:0:0:2CDE (talk) 05:14, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Several studies have found that societies that are more affected by infectious pathogens also exhibit higher levels of conservative political attitudes such as xenophobia and traditionalism

Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, released a report in 2017 that spoke to these concerns . "It has been estimated that 12 million Americans live with a neglected parasitic infection. A 2017 report documents the prevalence of hookworm in Lowndes County, Alabama."[6] Viriditas (talk) 22:57, 16 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]