In 2008, conservative email and websites propagated the false belief that Barack Obama came from somewhere other than his birthplace of Hawaii. In the New York Times in 2008, Sandra Aamodt and I addressed the neuroscience of why people came to adopt this belief. Now that Donald Trump is attempting to hide his five-year involvement in the “birther” movement, our piece is timely again.
As my book co-author and I pointed out in our 2008 article, false beliefs can emerge from cognitive biases. Better Humans provides an excellent graphical compilation of such biases. For example, we have an innate tendency to mold information we recall into established mental frameworks. We tend to remember news that accords with our worldview, and discount statements that contradict it.
Birtherism took root with Republicans, including Donald Trump. The belief appeals to racist impulses. Obama’s ascent offends some people’s worldviews, as documented in this excellent essay by Jamelle Bouie. As Bernie Sanders has pointed out, Sanders’s father was also an immigrant, and yet Sanders does not encounter birtherism.
In this respect, Trump is just one of millions of birthers with a prior disposition to be skeptical of a black man becoming President. As the “birther” movement reached a peak, he got on the bandwagon with a series of public statements starting in March 2011. Trump’s statements in 2011 can account in part for his appeal in the GOP primaries, as an initial appeal to the approximately 40% of Republicans who hold the same belief. Psychologists have suggested that legends propagate by striking an emotional chord. In the same way, ideas can spread by emotional selection, rather than by their factual merits. By endorsing birtherism, Trump was building an emotional allegiances. As late as 2014, he was still pushing the idea. My guess is that he is susceptible to the same cognitive biases as his supporters – he’s one of them, only with a high profile as a reality-show star.
Now, in an impressive display of chutzpah, Trump and his supporters are attempting to spread the idea that an early proponent of birtherism was…Hillary Clinton. There is some chance that this very striking (and false) statement will work, at least with Republicans. If a message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it is debunked. In repeating a falsehood, someone may back it up with an opening line like “I think I read somewhere” or even with a reference to a specific source, even if the source did not originate the idea.
The risk that people will adopt this false belief is made worse by the fact that ostensibly credible news media sources do not always engage in factchecking. Television and cable news are the worst. As just one example, CBS News has repeated the Trump campaign’s claims about Clinton uncritically. The journalistic impulse to avoid “taking sides” can kick in, even when the two sides are “true” and “false.” Perhaps because it increases ratings.
Any successful strategy to debunk a false claim should include a replacement statement that is true, thus giving readers and viewers something to hold on to. Social media such as Twitter can help in rapid response – but can also propagate false ideas. What is needed is a response that debunks a false claim, and contains true information as well. Barry Ritholtz has come up with a possible media template for responding to this particular lie by Donald Trump. Such a template should include true “replacement statements,” such as the fact that birtherism originated in conservative chain mails, and was taken up by conservative outlets like The National Review.
I find it encouraging that such a template is available. Maybe it can be used by news organizations more generally, not just in politics, but in other domains such as vaccine safety or manmade climate change. For now, Trump is giving news organizations many opportunities for practice.
Obvious fixes for the problem of false beliefs do not work well. We cited one psychological study finding that when subjects were given evidence that disagreed with their beliefs, they were inclined to reject the evidence, even if they were given a specific instruction to “be objective.” In the same study, however, when subjects were asked to imagine their reaction if the evidence had pointed to the opposite conclusion, they were more open-minded to information that contradicted their beliefs. Apparently, it pays for consumers of controversial news to take a moment and consider that the opposite interpretation may be true. This strategy of “consider the opposite” works – but it requires a cool head. And the current media environment is anything but cool.
Finally, an obvious problem with Trump’s involvement in fringe beliefs: as the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, he normalizes those beliefs and speaks with the voice of a major political party. It is possible to cite his authority as a source. Through him, the path for falsehoods to take root in American minds is stronger than ever.
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