We defend nature and fight for Life. We voice problems, highlight systemic errors, and try to solve them! And seemingly understandable things: the urgent need for the world to protect wildlife, care for the future of our children, unite efforts, and direct them at solving global problems.
But everything is quite different. Look at the news: political strife, power struggles! People, even many who were previously interested in environmental issues and helped solve them, completely turn away from protecting nature—instead beginning to engage in the 'big politics'. As a result, the entire information front is overdosed with strife!
The theme of 'who will be in power' becomes more important than the scientists' data stating that over the last 50 years, humans have destroyed more than 73% of all animals on Earth. But how can this be? Why?
Studying scientific works by ecologists, I came across correspondence among the specialists themselves! They complain on foreign forums about the same issues, saying people have generally stopped being interested in ecological problems. Many cannot understand why politics is considered more important than the necessity of addressing the problem of destroying our own habitat? Earth's biosphere.
I decided to see what objective data exists on this topic. It turns out not only I and ecologists are concerned about the problem. On October 10, 2024, a significant scientific study titled 'When Politics Trumps Truth: Political Alignment vs. Truthfulness as a Factor Determining Belief, Dissemination, and Memory of News' was published by scientists from Stanford University.
As you can see, the problem's horizon is not just our country, but the whole world!
So, the main conclusion of the scientists: people who read news in the media and on social networks are more influenced by political orientation (personal political preferences) than truth.
The research was conducted by psychological scientists. I'll provide a comment from Michael Schwalbe, the leading author and research associate of the Department of Psychology, School of Humanities and Sciences.
'We saw that people were more influenced by political positions than the truth <…> We saw this on both political sides and even among people who performed well on logical thinking tests. We were a little surprised to see how widespread this trend is. People actively resisted inconvenient truths.'
Thus, scientists identified societal bias based on personal political preferences. In one test, specialists assessed people’s beliefs about the objectivity of their political views, compared to other opinions. So, if a person ardently supported 'their party', they were pointed out the objective inaccuracy of their opinion. And, as it turned out, those most confident in the absence of bias in their political side were… the most biased.
Further, scientists tested people on real news and fake news. It turned out that the bias effect was EVEN GREATER on real news, that is, on TRUTH! People consciously sincerely believed fake news that supported their political views more than information that was TRUTH but differed from their worldview.
I want to comment on another author of the study, Jeffrey Cole - a professor of organizational studies in the field of education and business, as well as a professor of psychology at the University of Houston.
'Everyone thinks the problem is with another person <…> People say: “Just not me!” But, like in many socio-psychological studies, it turns out that this is quite a common problem faced by all political parties and people with different levels of education. The problem is not only disinformation, but also the filters of our own thinking—possibly even more so.'
Interestingly, there were earlier studies on similar topics, but the results were different. In the new work, scientists identified methodological errors of their past colleagues. For example, participants in past studies knew in advance on what topic the research was being conducted and tried to consciously deceive the scientists! Therefore, the group of specialists from Stanford used other methods, including a legend about memory and communication, and control questions, so that research participants did not know what the study specifically concerned.
I was interested in the study's conclusions about what scientists generally think about this! Where is the root of the problem? Specialists believe that the leading factors of 'radical bias' are extreme views supporting one's own political preference, active consumption of media materials, as well as sincere self-conviction in the subjectivity of one's own political side. That is, people CONVINCE themselves of their rightness, consciously exclude other options, consciously scroll through all materials that somehow differ from their opinion. As a result, they reject any truth, and even if they are proven that the truth is true, they will refuse to believe it!
Photo 1. Hong Kong legislator throws a pillow at the finance minister, demanding universal pension provision.
Photo 2. A fight erupted in the Macedonian parliament over the budget. Police had to be called to stop the disorder.
Photo 3. A brawl of Turkish lawmakers during debates
Photo 4. Another fight in the Turkish parliament
Photo 5. South Korean legislator threw tear gas at the chairman of the National Assembly against the free trade agreement with the USA
Photo 6. Sri Lankan opposition members created disorder when the president announced budget plans for the country
Photo 7. Economic debates in the Italian parliament
Photo 8. In South Korea, a legislator tried to avoid a battle over an environmental protection bill
Photo 9. In Taiwan, members of one party rioted against another party
Photo 10. A fight in the Mexican Congress over who would stand behind the podium
The study authors also note that according to other related scientific data, it is proven that some of these 'political trends' reinforce each other over time. TRUTH, the truth, generally ceases to concern anyone: the main thing is to lobby their political preferences, to completely 'stand by the party', and to reject any others.
This stirs up hatred, drives society crazy, and creates conditions where it’s impossible to understand where the truth is and where the lie is.
Publishing for you the scientific work itself (original, PDF).
File When Politics Trumps Truth 1.1 MB
© PAVEL PASHKOV
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