Cognitive dissonance? No, I would call it self-delusion.
This is the sort of a poll data that should make our self-appointed -- errr, G.E./Disney/Viacom-appointed -- guardians of the truth hang their collective heads in shame:
Quote:
A third of the American public believes U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to a recent poll, and 22 percent said Iraq actually used chemical or biological weapons.
But no such weapons have been found, nor is there evidence they were used recently in Iraq.
Before the war, half of those polled in a survey said Iraqis were among the 19 hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001. But most of them were from Saudi Arabia. None were Iraqis.
How could so many people be so wrong about information that has dominated the news for nearly two years?
The poll results startled the pollsters who conducted and analyzed the surveys.
"It's a striking finding," said Steve Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, which asked the weapons questions during a May 14-18 poll of 1,265 respondents.
"Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention," he said, "this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance."
That is, having their beliefs conflict with the facts.
Kull said the poll's data showed the mistaken belief that weapons of mass destruction were found "is substantially greater among those who favored the war."
Pollsters and political analysts see several reasons for the gap between fact and belief: the public's short attention span on foreign news, fragmentary or conflicting media reports that lacked depth or skepticism, and Bush administration efforts to sell a war by oversimplifying the threat.
Run through the streets yelling "WAKE UP!!!!!" at the top of your lungs?
ARGH!!
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patiodog
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:09 am
I'm not the least bit surprised. But, then, most people don't vote.
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Dartagnan
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:16 am
I wonder how many of those confused folks get their news from Fox, which has done its best to muddy the waters.
Along these lines, I saw a bit of Michael Savage on MSNBC the other day. What a piece of work he is. Referred to the Porn Belt as the part of the US where folks are buying Hillary Clinton's book...
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Setanta
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:21 am
Those media clowns wish they could enjoy that kind of literary success.
Actually, the cognitive dissonance doesn't surprise me--i consider it a given. It's just like the Reagan phenomenon; Bush puts on his goofy smile, and so many granny's out there have the "aw, ain't he cute" reaction, and then Bush wraps himself in the flag, and the guys come to a rigid position of attention, and salute the flag. Belief in the man is more important to a very large segment of the electorate than any annoying, confusing and inconclusive search for truth.
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sozobe
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:31 am
It's not surprising, you're right. Or at least it shouldn't be. It IS infuriating, though. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
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patiodog
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:39 am
I've honestly heard a registered voter ask, one week before a presidential election, "Who's running?"
It is what it is. It's hard for a lot of people (myself included, sometimes) to care about things when the belly, bank account, and gas tank are all full.
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Frank Apisa
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:43 am
In the immortal words of HL Mencken:
No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
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Sugar
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:46 am
The opinion of 1,265 people does not reflect the opinions of the entire United States. It doesn't say who they surveyed, either. Was this on a college campus, on a sidewalk, in a mall, online?
This survey means nothing.
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sozobe
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:49 am
Sugar, that's what polls are. A bigger sample is always better, of course, but no poll goes out and asks every single human living in America what they think.
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ehBeth
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 10:59 am
If I look at one renovation forum I go to, I'd suggest that the numbers are low. The place is crawling with people who state clearly that they believe every word the government has said, and even some that they didn't, but think they might have to support the invasion of Iraq.
Certainly the subset sampled changes the numbers, but overall, there are a lot of Americans who still seem to 'believe'.
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Dartagnan
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:00 am
Here's another choice statement re the populace, to go with Mencken's immortal comment:
"When the American public walks, its knuckles graze the ground."
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fbaezer
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:08 am
I suppose the University of Maryland worked on an aleatory poll, and thus, that the sample does reflect the views of the American public. Regrettably the report does not say how the sample was made.
Such ex-post behavior is known by pollsters.
If a few days after an election you ask a representative sample of the population who they voted for, you will find an abnormally high percentage of people who say they voted for the winner.
Same thing here. There is a perception of the US Administration as winners, so part of the public is ready to buy unsellable stuff in order to be on the winner's side and to avoid cognitive dissonance.
If things had gone awry in Iraq, you could have found an opposite behavior in part of the public (saying, for instance, that they opposed the war from the very beginning). Fox News or no Fox News.
This kind of "lack of intelligence" in public opinion is a world wide phenomenon, not an American exclusive.
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Dartagnan
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:13 am
One could argue that things have gone awry in Iraq, at least to some extent. Our forces are under fire, the nation borders on anarchy, and people there are increasingly miserable. Though one wonders how many Americans are even dimly aware of this...
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Sugar
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:15 am
I'm not suggesting that every single human can be asked, but a larger sampling should be taken. I don't think a little over a thousand is a good indicator of 'all Americans' Again, it also doesn't say who they polled. It could be students from the University of Maryland and no one else. Did they poll outside of Maryland, etc.? I just like to know a little more before I consider these things a good representation of the entire country's population.
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Setanta
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:15 am
Likely, D'art, no significant percentage of the populations bothers to reliably inform itself, nor do the majority care about Iraqis.
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fbaezer
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:25 am
Sugar, the size of the sample is good enough, at 1200 +, for a population as large as the USA citizens, if the sample is aleatory (representative).
What matters more is not size, but if every US citizen had the same, or a similar chance of falling into the sample.
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edgarblythe
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:29 am
It reenforces what I have been thinking ever since the Vietnam War.
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Scrat
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 11:57 am
In the PIPA poll, they polled people on how they see themselves politically, and I can't help wishing they'd broken down the responses along political lines. I think it would be very useful to know how often those who showed themselves to be clueless identified themselves as Republican, Democrat, Independent or Other.
Of course, I don't find the fact that many in this country have no idea what's going on around the world surprising. I simply find it disturbing that some of them vote.
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Acquiunk
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Mon 16 Jun, 2003 12:18 pm
I would like to know the age, income, education and geographic location of the clueless. Was that a nation wide phenomena or is it confined to one class or section of the country?
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