Ideological Asymmetry in Moral Approval of Lying in Politics

Researchers publishing in the journal, Personality and Individual Differences (Volume 143, 1 June 2019, Pages 165-169), report finding a difference in acceptance of lying between individuals that score high on a particular personality trait and those who score low. The research investigated the relationship between ideology and moral disapproval of spreading misinformation by politicians.

The researchers found that people having higher scores on Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) were positively related to tolerance of politicians lying by commission, paltering (using truthful facts to create a false impression), and lying by omission (hiding facts or truth). The researchers wrote:

“Also, republicans were more tolerant towards politicians lying by commission and paltering than democrats. Experiment 2 (N = 395) replicated these results, and examined partisan bias. Democrats (but not republicans) showed a partisan bias in tolerance of lying by commission, whereas republicans (but not democrats) showed a partisan bias in tolerance of paltering. In both experiments, RWA and SDO mediated the relationships between political party and approval of spreading misinformation. These results suggest that right-wing individuals are more tolerant to the spreading of misinformation by politicians, although it should be noted that overall levels of approval were relatively low.”

What is interesting is the data showing that levels of tolerance toward misinformation are “relatively low.” If one accepts data showing that the president has made over 10,000 false or misleading statements is true, then most of his supporters disapprove of misinformation and lies but still support the president. If that is true, then many, maybe most, of supporters do not believe the president lies and misleads nearly as often as he doe, and/or they are unaware of unbiased assessments of the evidence as usually or always fact-based.

The other interesting observation is that the data suggests that authoritarian mindsets are somewhat more accepting of misinformation from their own side, but presumably not from political opposition. It may be the case that for hard core partisans, pundits and political players, this personality trait could be more pronounced and acceptance of lies is even greater than the subjects in the experiments described here. That would be an interesting experiment, assuming it is possible to do.

As is usual for most new social science research, these results need to be replicated to at least partly confirm their validity.