It's a shame they detoured from social psychology into politics. The claim that false information has social value, and therefore symbolic value, is easy to substantiate without the partisan political analysis which amounts to, "and that's why our political enemies do it!". Very childish.
Disagree, it is important to point out the tactics people use against each other, if we do not demonstrate and point out the weaponry in the world then we normalize servitude to the abusers. Arm and defend yourself against your abuser and know their game.
How did they detour into politics? They are addressing events in the real world, which is what science is about, and for social psychologists that definitely includes politics.
The whole thing is just "here's a narrow result in psychology" connected to grand theories about contemporary politics which implicate the current administration and its supporters into a reductionist explanatory analysis that is widely out of the scope of what they've actually studied.
They did not study trump, trump supporters, trump's political project, its motivations, their motivations, authoritarianism, etc. All of that analysis in this article is partisan politics with sciecne-washing.
If they are studying universal features of human psychology, their analysis should pertain to these features.
By wading into contemporary politics and attributing "authoritarian" psychology to people who want to believe, e.g., what trump says -- you're only making a partisan political statement. This hypothesis is one amongst an infinite number, and has nothing to do with their study.
"Oh but it feels true!" is exactly the opposite of science. They did not study Trump, nor his political strategies, not their supposed underlying psychological motivations.
One can find in every government in the world so-called "misinformation", and find in people who support those governments, credulity about this misinformation. They havent studied any of the relevant domains to make any of these partisan political claims, even if they are true.
By wading into contemporary politics, they are giving the veener of science to highly partisan claims about the supposed psychology of political actors. That isnt what they have studied.
Could you cite at least something in the article that you are referring to? What you say doesn't match what I read. It becomes misinformation itself otherwise.
> "Oh but it feels true!"
Where is that said or implied? They did research and described it.
> attributing "authoritarian" psychology to people who want to believe, e.g., what trump says -- you're only making a partisan political statement. This hypothesis is one amongst an infinite number, and has nothing to do with their study.
They did indeed study that and discussed the research. We need to study partisan behavior without being dismissed as partisan ourselves - otherwise, we just operate in the dark, shut down by partisan attacks.
> One can find in every government in the world so-called "misinformation", and find in people who support those governments, credulity about this misinformation.
There is precipitation everywhere, but some places are deserts and some are rainforests and there is everything in between, and there are many patterns and causes, from monsoons to mist from SF Bay. To dismiss all precipitation research because 'rain is everywhere' is meaningless.
You're making many claims, but have nothing to back it up.
> They did not study Trump, nor his political strategies
Studying the widespread beliefs in misinformation about COVID-19 is perfectly valid, and important. It just so happens that the beliefs in question were overwhelmingly held by members of a very specific political group. The research described in the article helps explain this connection.
