Donald Trump supporters want to vote for him even if he lies, study finds

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-02/trump-supporters-will-still-vote-for-him-even-if-he-lies/8320100

Supporters of US President Donald Trump are more likely to believe what he says, and even after they are shown it is not true, they still want to vote for him, research has shown.

The University of Western Australia study was undertaken by researcher Briony Swire-Thompson and School of Psychological Science associate professor Ullrich Ecker in late 2015 as the US election campaign was ratcheting up in intensity and rhetoric.

Researchers gave more than 2,500 Republican and Democrat participants a selection of Mr Trump's statements and asked whether they believed the statements, some attributed to him, others not.

"If they knew the information was from Trump, Republican supporters believed the information more and the opposite was true for Democrats, as soon as they heard it was from Trump, it didn't matter if it was true or false," he said.

He said when the subjects were told the information was fake, it had some effect, but did not really change their voting intention.

The researchers were also surprised Trump supporters became confused about what was true or false, even after being told.

"As soon as the information was associated with Trump, people got confused and after a week or so they had a hard time remembering what was true or false," he said.

Fed up with normal politicians

Mr Ecker said many people were "fed up" with politicians and did not want politicians to "tiptoe" around issues, but it meant vulnerable people might be exploited.

"People in desperate situations, who are feeling left behind and neglected by the existing system, they become vulnerable to leaders who may not have their best issues at heart," he said.

"If people feel they are being left behind and are having trouble putting food on the table, they long for strong leaders and then fall for [those] leaders.

"We're kind of used to politicians cherry-picking and twisting the truth a little bit, but this was a new quality, not only in the US but also in the UK, politicians were saying outright false things, and getting away with it."

Social media echo chamber?

Mr Ecker said the ubiquity of social media allowed people to exist in political "echo chambers", and their views and opinions were rarely challenged.

"The rise of social media means people can choose more readily what to believe because they can find support for whatever they want to believe if they go to the right place online," he said.

"People like Trump are using social media such as Twitter to speak their mind, they are using the people's language."

Mr Ecker said the rise of this type of discourse could be seen in Australia as well, with the popularity of One Nation and non-traditional politicians.

"The mining boom has ended, people are unhappy and unemployed," he said.

"People in that situation are vulnerable to promises and of people getting up and saying 'it is the fault of this group."

polite_gandalf wrote on Mar 6^th, 2017 at 9:48pm:

The phenomenon of 'Trump' is a symptom of American society in decline.

'Trumpists' don't support him in spite of his psychological disorder, lies, hypocrisy and sheer incompetency... They support him because of them.

What took you so long, FD?

I'm not sure what we're supposed to take away from this.

That we shouldn't vote for the candidate that appeals to us? 

That would seem to be it...but then I remembered - I am not supposed to take anything from this.  This was not written for me, this was written as confirmation-bias fodder for the drones. 

There's plenty of that these days, so eat up.

Yawn.

It's gone past "fake news", Now it's fake indignation from ordinary people.   

As evil as these nice people are, you've gotta marvel at the advances they've made in propaganda technology. 

... wrote on Mar 7^th, 2017 at 12:05am:


Nicely put, Honky, much better than my analysis.

For moi, it's all about porkies.

longweekend58 wrote on Mar 7^th, 2017 at 8:19am:

If only it were that easy...

I was listening to a BBC report yesterday, where the reporters asked Trump supporters at a rally what they would think of Trump if most of what he said turned out to be lies... Most, apparently, just shrugged their shoulders.


Politifact...

    True                  15 (4%)(15)
    Mostly True        45 (12%)(45)
    Half True           54 (14%)(54)
    Mostly False       75 (20%)(75)
    False               123 (33%)(123)
    Pants on Fire     63 (17%)(63)

While I would still oppose the notion, it does question whether or not there should be some threshold or qualification for being allowed to vote. Do you think if an IQ minimum was introduced trump would have lost 20 million votes immediately?