UA Psychologists Find Voters Unable To "Consider The Source"

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - We’ve all seen them: the negative political ads that precede every presidential election. We’ve all smirked at their accusations and felt superior to their bunk. We’ve all changed the channel.

But even if you’re keen enough to see through the smear tactics, negative campaign ads can still impact your political views, say two researchers from the University of Arkansas.

"These ads are effective because they plant information in voters’ minds and wait for time to erase some of the details," said James Lampinen, assistant professor of psychology.

Lampinen and graduate student Timothy Odegard recently completed experiments showing that misinformation presented by negative political ads can distort the way voters recall a candidate’s views. The researchers presented this finding in June at the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.

The experiments extended over a period of five days. On the first day, a pool of 80 "voters" listened to information about a fictitious Republican candidate named Randy Daniels. Lampinen and Odegard provided a brief biographical sketch of the candidate then asked participants to examine a list of 20 items representing Daniels’ views on a variety of issues.

Two days later, the voters reconvened to hear more information about Randy Daniels, this time presented by a third-party source. Half of the subjects were told that the information came from a liberal political satirist. The others were led to believe that it originated from a non-profit, voters’ education group.

Despite the different cover stories, all participants received the same information - a list of 20 statements summarizing Daniels’ views. Some of the items matched the candidate’s own statements word for word. Other items presented misinformation.

After reviewing the materials, participants were asked to return two days later for recognition testing. The test consisted of 24 items - eight true statements originally presented by Daniels, four items of misinformation presented by the third-party source, eight false statements never before presented, and four control statements.

Lampinen and Odegard asked the participants to identify only those statements that had been presented by the candidate on the first day of the study. When the tests came back, the researchers found that their "voters" had attributed more than half of the misinformed statements to the candidate Randy Daniels.

Those who had received the skewed information from the "satirist" mis-attributed 68 percent of it to Daniels while those who heard from the "non-profit" source mis-attributed nearly 80 percent. This result supports other research, according to the UA psychologists.

"It’s been shown that people are more willing to accept misinformation from a source they consider highly credible," Odegard explained. "Candidates in the real world have allegedly taken advantage of this - using supposedly non-partisan organizations to spread false information about their opponents. Most voters never realize that these groups are associated with a specific politician."

Voters can be swayed by sources they consider credible, but participants in the UA study appear to have accepted misinformation even from a source with low credibility. Furthermore, each of the subjects had been pre-tested for party affiliation, political knowledge and personal belief structure. The researchers found that none of these variables affected the subjects’ performance on the recognition test.

These facts imply that negative ads and misinformation operate somewhat subconsciously - preying on the voters’ inability to trace information back to its original source.

Unlike simple recognition memory, source memory requires a person to perform a compound cognitive task, Lampinen said. Individuals must not only remember information, but they must connect it in some way to the person who presented that information.

"Source memory relies on your ability to recall specific details that help you zero in on where you heard the information. Maybe you remember the tone of that person’s voice or the expression on his face when he gave you the information. The important thing is that you’ve glued some extra detail about the source onto that information," Lampinen said.

Unfortunately, the glue is weak. Source memory tends to fade quickly over time, severing the link between information and its origin, Lampinen added. It took less than a week for the participants in his study to break the connection between information and source. The extended duration of a real election offers even greater opportunity to forget.

"Not only is it a much greater time span, but real voters are bombarded with far more information than we gave our subjects," Lampinen said. "Voters may end up quite confused about what the candidate’s actual positions and views are by the time an election rolls around."

And although the researchers did not test whether such confusion affects behavior, Lampinen says it’s reasonable to assume that forming mistaken views about a candidate can influence the way people vote.

No wonder we don’t recognize candidates once they get into office.

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