unSpun_ Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation - Brooks Jackson [31]
Democrats exploit this psychological trap, too. In the previous chapter we noted how Kerry had falsely accused Bush of favoring big “cuts” in Social Security benefits. That was also widely believed. In the National Annenberg Election Survey, nearly half of respondents—49 percent—tended to believe a statement that Bush’s plan would “cut Social Security benefits 30 to 45 percent.” Only 37 percent found the statement untruthful. And we want to stress an important point here: the public wasn’t thinking of a “cut” as a slowdown in the growth of benefits for those retiring decades in the future; they were thinking of a real cut. The Annenberg survey found that 50 percent rated as truthful a statement that “Bush’s plan to cut Social Security would cut benefits for those currently receiving them,” and only 43 percent found the statement untruthful.
Bush, of course, had stated repeatedly during his 2000 campaign and throughout his first term that he would not cut current benefits by a penny. So why would a plurality of the public believe the opposite? The reason, we believe, is that Social Security is thought of as a Democratic program and Republicans are thought of as opposing it (somewhat unfairly: large majorities of Republican House and Senate members voted for it when it was passed in 1935). Because of the stereotyped view that Republicans don’t favor Social Security, too few took the trouble to question the idea that Bush would cut current benefits.
It is difficult for candidates to overcome these stereotypes. In 1990, voters in Pennsylvania were disposed to believe that the Republican nominee, Barbara Hafer, opposed abortion rights and that the incumbent Democratic governor, Robert Casey, favored a legal right to abortion; the reverse was true. In general, Democrats are more likely to be “pro-choice” and Republicans “prolife,” but not in this case. A good rule is that “in general” doesn’t necessarily apply to “this specific.”
Sometimes we have to avoid mental shortcuts and take the long way around if we want to avoid being manipulated or making these mistakes on our own. Ask yourself: “Is the picture in my head a good likeness of reality? Does this Democrat in fact favor this tax increase? Does this Republican in fact want to cut Social Security benefits? Where’s the evidence?”
The “Root for My Side” Trap
Related to the “pictures in our heads” trap is the “root for my side” trap. There’s evidence that our commitment to a cause not only colors our thinking but also affects what we see—and don’t see—as we observe the world around us.
Psychologists have known about this phenomenon for a long time. In 1954, Albert Hastorf and Hadley Cantril published a classic study of how Princeton and Dartmouth football fans saw a penalty-ridden game in which the Princeton quarterback was taken off the field with a broken nose and a mild concussion and a Dartmouth player later suffered a broken leg. They found that 86 percent of the Princeton students said that Dartmouth started the rough play, but only 36 percent of the Dartmouth students saw it that way. The researchers asked, “Do you believe the game was clean and fairly played or that it was unnecessarily rough and dirty?” The results: 93 percent of Princeton fans said “rough and dirty,” compared with only 42 percent of Dartmouth fans. When shown films of the game and asked to count actual infractions by Dartmouth players, Princeton students spotted an average of 9.8, twice as many as the 4.3 infractions noted by Dartmouth students.
Were the Dartmouth and Princeton fans deliberately distorting what they saw? Probably not. Hastorf and Cantril went so far as to say that people don’t just have different attitudes about things, they actually see different things: “For the ‘thing’ simply is not the same for different people whether the ‘thing’ is a football game, a presidential candidate, Communism or spinach.”
We don’t know about spinach,