Conservatives' sensitivity to political misunderstandings

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf1234

This study examined the relationship between political information bias and affiliation, and there seems to be a widespread belief that, in general, conservatives in the United States are uniquely susceptible to misunderstanding. However, this has not been systematically proven.

Thus, we focused on beliefs about a narrow set of claims that were never intended to capture the richness of the political information environment in research.

We generated and studied a unique longitudinal dataset that combined social media engagement data with a 12-wave panel study of Americans' political knowledge of high-profile news stories over a six-month period.

The results confirmed that conservatives are less sensitive and less able to distinguish truth from falsehood than liberals.

This is partly explained by the fact that the most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote conservative positions, while the corresponding truths generally favor liberals. However, the results, which are exacerbated by the fact that as the proportion of partisan news increases, liberals tend to improve their sensitivity significantly more than conservatives, highlight the importance of reducing the supply of right-leaning misinformation.