I don’t think anyone here is suggesting the study shows a general knowledge gap. For all we know, Bush supporters might know a lot more than Kerry supporters about baseball statistics, Asian history, physics, or underwater basket weaving - the study doesn’t cover those topics. But it does cover Iraq, and it shows pretty conclusively (i.e. to the same standards as any other political study) that Bush supporters knew less about Iraq than Kerry supporters.
You capitalize “CERTAIN ISSUES” as if we’ll miss it otherwise, but it’s obvious anyway that the study only refers to certain issues, and I, for one, have mentioned that fact when appropriate.
Then I don’t understand why I’m still being questioned as far as my provisional acceptance of the report…I’ve already said WHY I feel the way I do. Yet I keep getting statistics thrown at me as if I don’t understand what a 3% margin of error means…while completely missing what I’ve actually said about the study. here, I’ll be clear…I accept that this one study concluded that Bush supporters seem to have less knowledge about Saddam Hussain, Iraq and WMD than Kerry supporters do…with a probable 3% claimed margin of error. Ok?
I really don’t have a dog in this fight to be honest…I’m neither a Republican nor a Bush supporter (nor did I vote for him…either time). I came into this thread just because the OP interested me. I’m just skeptical of being able to use this study for any but the most narrow conclusions…which to me really don’t say more than ‘Bush supporters don’t (seemingly) know as much as Kerry supporters as far as Iraq and WMD goes’ as far as one poll goes…and to me this isn’t a surprising conclusion when you take into account the talking points of the two sides, is it? Attempt to broaden the conclusions though (which WOULD be interesting) and this report doesn’t really tell us anything at all. So…to me this report is shear propaganda (as its being used mostly in the threads I’ve seen it tossed out in)…merely a sop to the Dems feelings because of the recent election.
:rolleyes: Instead of this kind of post, why don’t you show me the other studies that point to a knowledge gap on those vertical issues, laigle. I’m unaware of any other substantial polls or studies pointing that way. Enlighten me.
This argument is getting really weak. Actually, it was weak the first time it was used to “debunk” the study, but now it is apparent that this isn’t even an argument at all. It is desperation.
It might also help if the poll were taken during a less contentious election or at least earlier in the season before so much of the population go so wound up about it.
Allow me to offer a mechanism which might account for some of the differences seen. Partisanship. Notice that the first question (although very vague) seems to show the opposite trend of the others. Kerry supporters answered that the economy was worse today than 4 years ago by a much larger margin than did Bush supporters. Allow me to suggest that this may not be due to any “informed” gap. It could simply be the way Bush and Kerry supporters would respond to such questions on political polls during the tail end of a contentious political campaign. That is, Bush supporters may tend to respond to questions in ways they think are favorable to Bush while Kerry supporters might responde in ways they think are favorable to Kerry. If you predominantly choose questions in which the “correct” answer is unfavorable to Bush, you might measure exactly what this study measured (perhaps at a reduced level). Further, without a substantial portion of undecided respondants or at least some more questions regarding where people learned things, I’m not sure you can say more than some proportion answered (or would answer) questions in a certain way. I think this works both ways. Do Kerry supporters “know” more about these issues, or did they simply answer the questions in a way which they felt supported their candidate. Can you say definitively from this study one way or the other?
Now, for the record I am not saying that the answers to the Iraq questions are equally interpretable as that one about the economy. Also I am not saying that the responses of the Bush supporters were correct. All I am suggesting is that there may be a mechanism other than “informed” which could account for a substantial portion of those answers.
So are you saying that they are lying about what they actually think the truth to be because they want to give the answer that supports their candidate?
pervert, that is precisely what the study itself speculated: that Bush supporters, faced with a statement which could be construed as being harmful to Bush if true, chose to hold the position that “supported” Bush eve thought it was factually incorrect - the very definition of cognitive dissonance.
That is an interesting take on it, but I think it falls to Ockham’s razor. Genuine ignorance is a much simpler explanation than supression of knowledge for partisan reasons.
That may be so, Steven, but remember that Ockham’s Razor says nothing about “simplicity” - that is a popular myth. Ockham’s Razor concerns positing unnecessary entities. Here we have two entities, genuine ignorance and partisan cognitive dissonance, either or both of whch could explain the results.
The important point here is that the results themselves have very definitely not been “debunked”.
I understand this well. If we take the default configuration of “a person” and then add the “entity”(some factor(s) which can change the causality of an event, not necessarially individuals) of ignorance, then our new formulation is “an ignorant person.” To be completely honest I’m not sure this is different from the generic “a person” because the default state for a human being is ignorance. Knowledge is gained, not inherent. Still, for the sake of arguement, let’s assume one entity which can contribute to causality(ignorance) when discussing why respondents answered as they did. For the second formulation, partisan cognitive dissonance, we start with a person. Add knowledge. Add Partisanship. Add cognitive dissonance. Now that is three entities necessary to create the second formulation. Partisanship in and of itself does not necessitate cognitive dissonance. I know people who are partisan and yet will relay facts accurately. They may personally discount them when it comes time to wield their political power because of their partisanship, but they will be able to answer factual questions accurately. Cognitive Dissonance is more subconsious than consious.
So now it becomes incumbent on anyone proposing knowledgeable respondents giving incorrect answers to factual questions to show their entities are necessary or else fall to the mighty razor. A partisan unafflicted with cognitive dissonance knowingly giving incorrect answers is pervert’s formulation. Person + Knowledge + Partisanship + Deliberately giving an incorrect answer(Lying). A partisan afflicted with cognitive dissonance giving incorrect answers because they have supressed their true knowledge is SentientMeat’s formulation. Person + Knowledge + Partisanship + Cognitive Dissonance.
I think Person + Ignorance makes the most sense and is the most likely.
Agreed, at least as far as the definition of “results” we have been using in this thread goes. As I noted above, there are specific conjectures in the study’s analysis section that I certainly would call “bunk” and are not directly supported by the data. Still, anyone using it as support for an assertion that self-identified Bush supporters are disproportionally ignorant of these issues than self-identified Kerry supporters will find themselves on firm ground.
No, I’m saying that they are unsure, and they choose the answer on a multiple choice question which they think best supports their candidate.
Is it your contention that there were not enough to change it at all?
No, I am not saying that the survey was distorted or that it should be ignored or anything at all like that. All I am saying is that there are a lot of people in America who are not as “up” on world news as others. Many of them, nonetheless support a particular candidate. Especially at the tail end of a very contentious political campaign, there might be enough people who, rather than answer “I don’t know” would answer instead with what they think puts the best face on the candidate they support.
On review, I think I agree with your last post except for the part which characterized my post as claiming lying on the part of partisans. I’m not trying to claim that. I’m merely positing a mechanism whereby general ignorance in the population could look like a specific ignorance difference between Bush and Kerry supporters.
No, cognitave dissonance requires that the practitioner be aware of the truth and choose the falsehood instead. I am suggesting that no such mechanism or disfunction needs to be postulated. I’m simply suggesting that a lot of people out ther don’t know the truth about these things. There was room for debate (to say the least) about Saddam’s WMD until fairly recently. The matter was put to rest (for me) by David Kay and then the Dueffler report.
Allow me to assail the ground just a bit.
What I am suggesting is that some purportion of the population is ignorant of the facts regarding the issues raised in the PIPA study. I agree that some proportion is not ignorant of these things, but there is a significant purportion that is. If the questions are chosen so that most of the correct answers favor one candidate, that answer will garner all of the knowledgeable responses but only the ignorant responses from that candidate.
Allow me to propose some hypothetical numbers which might get the sort of responses we see in the PIPA study but which do not support the contention that Bush supporters are more ignorant of even these issues.
Ignorant Kerry supporters IK (40%)
Knowledgeable Kerry supporters KK (10%)
Ignorant Bush supporters IB (40%)
Knowledgeable Bush supporters KB(10%)
The question about Iraqi WMD programs, for instance might get correct responses from IK, KK, and KB for a possible total of 60%. Meanwhile the incorrect response would get 40% from IB. When you broke the answers down by faction, it would look very bad for Bush supporters.
On the other hand, when you ask about the state of the economy, the trend might be reversed. If the study had included more question for which the correct answer was favorable to Bush* we might be able to test this hypothesis.
Can you guys see where my math is way wrong? Is there some aspect of the study which I am ignoring which allows us to elliminate the ignorant Kerry voters from the knowledgeable Kerry voters? Or to do the same for the Bush voters?
*Yea, Yea, I know there are no questions to which the correct answer is favorable to Bush.
pervert, I think that your hypothesis does have some validity to it as a hypothesis. At some point though, I think it actually gets pretty close to what the PIPA people themselves were hypothesizing…which is that people sort of choose to hear / believe what they want to believe when the facts would undermine other beliefs (such as their faith in a certain candidate).
I will note however that your hypothesis would not seem to work…or would take a certain amount of massaging with the WMD question, for example. Because there, wouldn’t you predict that the Kerry supporters who were wrong would lean heavily toward the wrong answer that said Saddam has no WMD when in fact those who were wrong were fairly evenly balanced with a bit more believing that Saddam had more WMD / WMD programs than he had rather than less than he had. [Unless that you want to argue that Kerry’s views on Iraq were sufficiently nuisanced that this drove the mixed views amongst ignorant Kerry supporters, … ]
At any rate, in the end what you have is a more charitable reason for why so many Bush supporters were inccorrect on these issues compared to Kerry supporters but the incorrectness hasn’t really gone away. And, perhaps you have a bit more of a coherent hypothesis of why you might be able to find some questions where Kerry supporters would come out looking a lot worse than Bush supporters. (If only one could find these questions, particularly on as issues of comparable importance as the justifications presented for our going to war in Iraq.)
I agree. It is pretty close to the idea of cognative dissonence. If a person does not know the answer to something, why don’t they simply say that instead of guessing, for instance. But it is not required that they actually deny a truth, all that is required is that they be ignorant of it.
At the same time, however, it may be necessary that for my idea to work out the “ignorant” people would have to be at least partially cognizant of the issue. They would need to know enough to identify which answer supports their candidate.
No, I don’t think so. One of the reasons I admired Kerry in his campaign is that he never said this himself. He had a very difficult time expressing that Saddam was a threat, but did not need to be attacked. What I mean is that claiming no WMD at all might look like a disservice to Kerry. Another way in which he could be attacked as a flip flopper, for instance.
For sure. If anything, my suggestion makes the incorrectness is worse.
