While partisanship influenced the extent to which participants relied on the misinformation overall, retractions were equally effective across all conditions; no impact of political worldview on retraction effectiveness

Ecker, Ullrich K. H., Brandon Sze, and Matthew Andreotta. 2020. “No Effect of Partisan Worldview on Corrections of Political Misinformation.” PsyArXiv. August 20. doi:10.31234/osf.io/bszm4

Abstract: Misinformation often has a continuing effect on people’s reasoning despite clear correction. One factor assumed to affect post-correction reliance on misinformation is worldview-driven motivated reasoning. For example, a recent study with an Australian undergraduate sample found that when politically-situated misinformation was retracted, political partisanship influenced the effectiveness of the retraction. This worldview effect was asymmetrical, that is, particularly pronounced in politically-conservative participants. However, the evidence regarding such worldview effects (and their symmetry) has been inconsistent. Thus, the present study aimed to extend previous findings by examining a sample of 429 pre-screened U.S. participants supporting either the Democratic or Republican Party. Participants received misinformation suggesting that politicians of either party were more likely to commit embezzlement; this was or was not subsequently retracted, and participants’ inferential reasoning was measured. While political worldview (i.e., partisanship) influenced the extent to which participants relied on the misinformation overall, retractions were equally effective across all conditions. There was no impact of political worldview on retraction effectiveness, let alone evidence of a backfire effect, and thus we did not replicate the asymmetry observed in the Australian-based study. This pattern emerged despite some evidence that Republicans showed a stronger emotional response than Democrats to worldview-incongruent misinformation.

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In sum, our results are in line with the notion that potentially-irrational rejection of
evidence is equally likely on both ends of the political-worldview spectrum, and that part of
the reason that evidence rejection has been predominantly demonstrated in conservatives is
that researchers have predominantly looked at rejection of evidence that is consistent with
conservative worldviews. However, this presents future research with a conundrum, because
a number of studies have now aimed but failed to find rejection of scientific evidence on the
left (e.g., Baumgaertner, Carlisle, & Justwan, 2018; Hamilton, Hartter, & Saito, 2015;
Lewandowsky, Woike, & Oberauer, 2020). For example, Lewandowsky et al. (2020)
reported that vaccine-hesitancy and endorsement of alternative medicine—both anecdotally
associated with a liberal worldview—were in fact more prevalent in right-wing libertarians
and conservatives. Based on additional evidence from a task that required reasoning about
scientific evidence “dilemmas” that featured both worldview-consistent and inconsistent
aspects, Lewandowsky et al. concluded that partisans on both ends of the spectrum show
biased processing of evidence, but that science denial was nevertheless a mainstay of the
political right. Future research therefore needs to shed light on the catalysts that turn
omnipresent information-processing biases into actual evidence rejection and science denial.