03-12-2016, 06:43 PM
In honor of reading through the Facebook posts about the Chicago riot from the perspective of Trump supporters, establishment GOP candidate supporters, and Democrat voters, I have to post this. The commentary is from the page Unbiased America, but the link is to the study itself.
"Ever notice how Democrats seem to deny that President Reagan did anything good, and Republicans conveniently forget any of the positives that came out of the Clinton administration?
Well, there's another study indicating that Republicans and Democrats aren't as stupid as they pretend to be. Scientists assembled two groups of people. In the first group, questions about basic political knowledge were asked. For example, did inflation get better or worse under Reagan? Did the deficit rise or fall under Clinton? The results showed a big, partisan difference in the answers people gave. Republicans, for example, were more likely to (wrongly) state that the deficit got worse during Clinton's presidency. And democrats were more likely to (wrongly) state that inflation got worse under Reagan.
Now here's the fascinating part: in the second group of people, the same questions were asked. But this group of people were told they would receive a small reward for each correct answer they gave. The result? A 55% improvement in the test scores!
In other words, Democrats and Republicans knowingly lie about political issues to make their side look better. This may not be surprising, but it's the amount of bias that is shocking. To think that people willingly suppress 55% of the truth because of their political allegiance! The good news, though, is that it only took a small incentive (chance to win an Amazon gift certificate) for the partisan bias to disappear."
(One of the page admins pointed out that saying the deficit didn't fall under Clinton could potentially not be reflective of lying to oneself as much as it could be an honest misunderstanding between debt and deficit - as debt did rise)
http://huber.research.yale.edu/materials/39_paper.pdf
"Ever notice how Democrats seem to deny that President Reagan did anything good, and Republicans conveniently forget any of the positives that came out of the Clinton administration?
Well, there's another study indicating that Republicans and Democrats aren't as stupid as they pretend to be. Scientists assembled two groups of people. In the first group, questions about basic political knowledge were asked. For example, did inflation get better or worse under Reagan? Did the deficit rise or fall under Clinton? The results showed a big, partisan difference in the answers people gave. Republicans, for example, were more likely to (wrongly) state that the deficit got worse during Clinton's presidency. And democrats were more likely to (wrongly) state that inflation got worse under Reagan.
Now here's the fascinating part: in the second group of people, the same questions were asked. But this group of people were told they would receive a small reward for each correct answer they gave. The result? A 55% improvement in the test scores!
In other words, Democrats and Republicans knowingly lie about political issues to make their side look better. This may not be surprising, but it's the amount of bias that is shocking. To think that people willingly suppress 55% of the truth because of their political allegiance! The good news, though, is that it only took a small incentive (chance to win an Amazon gift certificate) for the partisan bias to disappear."
(One of the page admins pointed out that saying the deficit didn't fall under Clinton could potentially not be reflective of lying to oneself as much as it could be an honest misunderstanding between debt and deficit - as debt did rise)
http://huber.research.yale.edu/materials/39_paper.pdf
![[Image: Cz_eGI3UUAASnqC.jpg]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cz_eGI3UUAASnqC.jpg)
