There has been something of a fuss recently about some American research into voter misperceptions, that suggests, wait for it, people with entrenched partisan views construe facts in order to fit with their view of the world.Take this excerpt from the PM’s Big Society speech:“Of course, there is no one lever we can pull to create the Big Society in our country. And we shouldn’t be naïve enough to think that if the government rolls back and does less, then miraculously society will spring up and do more. The truth is that we need a government that actually helps to build up the Big Society.”Now let us look at how this was construed by a typical man on the Clapham Omnibus who wishes to be Labour leader, a Mr E Milliband of Westminster quoted in the Guardian (Guardian ).“This is essentially a 19th century or US-style view of our welfare state which is cut back the welfare state and somehow civic society will thrive.”If we give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he actually read the speech, it is almost as if he was willfully misinterpreting what the PM said. But, what the research into this phenomenon of confirmation bias tells us is that we become attuned to evidence that supports our previous position and give undue weight to such facts while we fail to absorb and/or give less weight to facts that do not fit with our previous position. The American research reminds us that not only does this selective weighting of facts exist; but, that in trying to correct misperceptions (ie perceptions that the researchers judge to be wrong) you can trigger what they call a “backfire” effect, in which the corrections actually increase misperceptions amongst the target group.Going back to our example, if we were to play a tape of Mr E. Milliband’s comments to voters, we could see a number of them saying to themselves, “Mmmm, I rather like the idea of cutting back the welfare state”; thus, Mr Milliband’s comments actually confirm what he might perceive as the wrong headed position of the voters.There are clearly, some practical implications of the existence of confirmation bias and the “backfire” effect. The most obvious is simply that relying on only the “facts” is not enough. Sometimes facts need a structure such as a story into which the individual facts can fit and be presented in ways that are digestible to the audience. Hence the idea of “the vision thing” or narrative that George Bush infamously never understood. Saying “it’s the economy stupid” may be true (in fact, it is always true – it is always the economy); but, it is not a message that people wanted to hear. It has to be put into a format and context which, as Nietzsche put it, fits with their perception of the world. That is the job of political leaders to communicate a persuasive message that people give weigh to and which changes their perception, either by reinforcing their positive perceptions or reversing their misperception.
