Mediaboss Marketing

In an electoral season that has blurred the line between fact and fantasy, a team of UCLA researchers is offering new evidence to support a controversial proposition: that when it comes to telling the difference between truth and fiction, not all potential voters are created equal.

When alternative facts allege some kind of danger,people whose political beliefs are more conservative are more likely than those who lean liberal to embrace them,says the teams soon-to-be-published study.

Conservatives vulnerability to accepting untruthsdidnt apply equally to all false claims: When lies suggested dangerous or apocalyptic outcomes, more conservative participants were more likely to believe them than when the lie suggested a possible benefit.

Participants whose views fell further left could be plenty credulous. But they were no more likely to buy a scaryfalsehood than they were to buy one with a positiveoutcome.

In short, conservatives are more likely to drop their guard against lies when they perceive the possible consequences as being dark. Liberals, less so.

The new findings are especially timely, coming in the wake of apresidentialelection tainted by so-calledfake news and in which unfounded assertions by Donald Trump gained many adherents.

Slated for publication in the journal Psychological Science, the new study offers insight into why many Americans embraced fabricatedstories about Clinton that often made outlandish allegations of criminal behavior. And it may shed light on why so many believed a candidates assertions that were both grim anddemonstrably false.

Finally, the results offer an explanation for why these false claims were more readily embraced bypeople who endorse conservative political causes than bythose whose views are traditionally liberal.

There are a lot of citizens who are especially vigilant about potential threats but not especially motivated or prepared to process information in a critical, systematic manner, said John Jost, co-director of New York Universitys Center for Social and Political Behavior. For years, Jost said, those Americans have been presented with terrifying messages that are short on reason and openly contemptuous of scholarly and scientific standards of evidence.

Jost, who was not involved with the latest research, said the new findings suggest that when dark claims and apocalyptic visions swirl, many of these anxious voters willcast skepticism aside and selectively embrace fearful claims, regardless ofwhetherthey'retrue. The result maytilt electionstoward politicians who stoke those fears.

We may be witnessing a perfect storm, Jost said.

The preliminarystudy,led by UCLA anthropologist Daniel M.T. Fessler, is the first to explore credulity as a function of ideological belief. The pool of participants was not strictly representative of the U.S. electorate, and some of the findings were weakened when the researchers removed questions pertaining to terrorism.

Moreover, some argue that it is not ideological belief but feeling beaten that makes people more credulous. When parties are thrown out of power, or have been out of office for long periods, their adherents are naturally drawn to believe awful things of the other party, says Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami.

Until the new findings have been replicated under the changed circumstances of a Republican victory, said Uscinski, they should be greeted with caution.

But the new results are in line with a picture of partisan differences emerging from an upstart corner of the social sciences. In a wide range of studies, anthropologists, social psychologists and political scientists have found that self-avowed liberals and people who call themselves conservatives simplythink differently.

All people range across a spectrum ofpersonality traits and thinking styles. But when compared to liberals, conservatives show a lower tolerance for risk and have a greater need for closure and certainty, on average.

Wired up to monitors that measure physiological changes, people who aremore conservativerespond to threatening stimuli with more pronounced changes than do their peers on the other end of the political spectrum: On average, their hearts race more, their breathing becomes more shallow and their palms get clammier.

Fessler started with a much more universal finding from evolutionary anthropology: When confronted with danger, humans are more likely to pay attention to the experience and commit it to memory than when theyre presented with cues that are neutral or pleasant.

Called the negativity bias, this inclination to give special weight to negative experiences has been powerfully protective, scientists believe. After all, failing to give such hazards their due could result in death, and humans who took a laid-back approach to such dangers were more likely to be purged from the gene pool.

As a result, a tendency to pay more attention to negative experiencesand even to scary warnings from othersis seen pretty much across the board.

Even so, Fessler reasoned, some peoplemay weight incoming negative information more heavily than others. Given the growing body of evidence for ideological differences in thinking styles, he and his team wondered whether conservatives and liberals would be differently inclined to believe assertions, including false assertions, when they warned of potential hazards.

In two experiments conducted in September 2016, Fesslers team recruited 948 American adults on websites designed to query subjects for research studies. To place each participant on the American political spectrum, the researchers asked for his or her views on a list of policies that generally divide conservatives from liberals. Then the study authors asked subjectsto rate how strongly they believed or disbelieved 16 assertions.

Some but not all of those statements were true, the researchers told participants. In fact, 14 of the 16 were false.

While six of the assertions dealt with outcomes that were generally positive (People who own cats live longer than people who dont), 10 made claims about potential hazards. Some of these outcomes were pretty serious: One stated that terrorist incidents in the U.S. have increased since 9/11 (not true in September 2016). Others declared that an intoxicated passenger could open an aircraft door while in flight (not true), that kale typically contains high levels of toxic heavy metals (not true), and that thieves could read encoded personal information from hotel keycards (not true).

Plenty of peoplewere taken in by lies about both hazards and benefits.And across the political spectrum, participants were more likely to believe scary pronouncements and a little less likely to believe cheery ones.

But when a bogus claim raised a prospective danger, the more heavily a subject leaned toward policies linked to conservatism, the more likely his or her skepticism fell aside. Meanwhile, the more heavily a subject leaned toward positions associated with liberalism, the more evenly skeptical he or she was toward claims cheery and scary.

The differences were not stark. But statistically, credulity toward dark assertions tracked with asubjects position on the political spectrum.

Using a statistical measure that gauges how widely subjects were scattered across the political spectrum, the researchersreckoned that for each tick rightward, the average subject grew 2% less skeptical of statements when they warned of bad outcomes than when they promised good ones.

That effect is pretty subtle. But spread over an electorate of 231 million eligible voters,the inclination of some to more readily acceptscary lies could make the purveyors of frightening falsehoods a more powerful force.

Fessler said his teams findings may help explain a curious phenomenon reported by those who fabricated fake news for profit: that stories aimed at liberal audiences were less likely to go viral than stories designed to draw in conservatives.

He also said the resultsmight help explain why social conservativeswere so inclined to support Trump.

When his team subdivided conservatives into three groups, he found that the trend toward dark belief was greatest in those who defined their conservatism largely in social and cultural terms. Among those whose conservatism was largely rooted infiscal policy, the selective credulity toward scary assertions was not evident.

The upshot, Fessler said, is that Americans across the political spectrum need a steady diet of truth. Sinceapocalyptic claims will always geta little more credence,they had better be factual.

You might be able to change peoples minds about issues, but you cant change their stable ways of responding to the world, saidFessler, who will tryto replicate his findings with a Republican in the White House.

melissa.healy@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter @LATMelissaHealy and "like" Los Angeles Times Science & Health on Facebook.

MORE IN SCIENCE

The surprising link between air pollution and Alzheimers disease

Humans, meet the ancient sea creature at the other end of your family tree

Dinosaur surprise: Scientists find collagen inside a 195-million-year-old bone

See more here:
Why conservatives are more likely than liberals to believe false information about threats - Los Angeles Times

Over the past two weeks, liberal activists have quietly and widely circulated a long Google spreadsheet. It contains the exact time, date, and location of more than 100 events that members of Congress will host in their districts this month.

Its titled Town Hall Project 2018, and it is a battle plan, borrowed from an old foe: the Tea Party.

In their efforts to pressure Republicans to save the Affordable Care Act, liberals are increasingly copying the tactics of the conservative activists who mobilized against the law in 2009.

We want to empower constituents to have face-to-face conversations, which we know from our organizing backgrounds can be powerful, says Jimmy Dahman, who runs Town Hall Project 2018. The goal of this project is to organize people in districts who are upset and frustrated.

Dahman used to work for the Clinton campaign. He got the idea for Town Hall Project 2018 when he was watching CNN and happened to see a clip of Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) leaving his office hours through a back door after a significant crowd of Obamacare advocates arrived. He started to wonder: What if we could make this happen all over the country?

The Obamacare protests are growing larger and more heated, leading to arrests on Capitol Hill and one legislator canceling an event altogether. Seasoned advocates on both sides of the issue say this looks a lot like the organizing against the health care law that gave rise to the Tea Party in 2009.

Eight years ago we were in the same boat, says Dean Clancy, who previously ran policy for Freedom Works, a Tea Party-affiliated group that advocated against the health care law. We were stunned, angry, fearful, besieged, paranoid, but we were also liberated. The feeling was wonderful, like you're the rebels in Star Wars.

Tea Party activists showed up en masse to Democratic legislators events during the summer of 2009, turning typically mundane meetings into heated shouting matches over death panels and pulling the plug on Grandma.

Dahman wants to harness the energy he now sees among liberals albeit in a slightly more organized way.

I remember those town halls; they have definitely come to mind, Dahman says. This kind of looks like 2009 all over again. Our bet is that we think a bunch of progressives, champing at the bit to organize, can make this spontaneous movement a little bit more structured.

The summer of 2009 was an especially challenging time for Democrats, as they found themselves besieged by protesters at local meetings. At one particularly memorable meeting, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) was approached by Mike Sola, who brought his wheelchair-bound son to the podium. Youve ordered a death sentence to this young man, he shouted before being escorted out by police.

These were the moments that helped fuel the rise of the Tea Party movement, as activists came out to protest what they saw as a government takeover of the American health care system. Tea Party activists became a force to be reckoned with in conservative politics, helping Republicans win the House in 2010, supporting primary challengers to the right of GOP incumbents, and cheering the 2013 government shutdown, an attempt to stop Obamacares rollout.

Tea Party activists have kept Obamacare repeal a top issue for the Republican Party and their early protests were key in making sure not a single Republican legislator supported the law.

Its unclear whether the liberal protests of 2016 will follow a similar trajectory but the opening battles are awfully familiar.

The town halls of 2016 have not gotten quite as heated yet, but the temperature is rising. In mid-January, Coffman left his regular open hours meeting at a local library early after hundreds showed up to discuss the health care law.

Rep. David Brat (R-VA) recently lamented how hes gotten bombarded by Obamacare supporters.

Since Obamacare and these issues have come up, the women are in my grill no matter where I go, Brat said at a local gathering of conservative groups, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. They come up When is your next town hall? And believe me, its not to give positive input.

Chants of save our health care drowned out an address that Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) gave on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) did not attend two previously scheduled town hall meetings this weekend. That angered dozens of constituents who wanted clarity on the GOPs plan to replace Obamacare, Politico reported. The Chicago Tribune reported that Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL) rescheduled a health care meeting, meant for constituents only, when a reporter showed up.

Protests over the past two weekends the Womens March first, followed by more spontaneous events at airports after Trumps immigration order have shown that hundreds of thousands of Trump opponents are interested in organizing.

And a few key, early victories, activists argue, can help keep those people turning out.

This includes the Trump administration sharply reversing course on a decision to pull down open enrollment ads for the Affordable Care Act after outcry from health advocates.

Its not clear whether that decision was made in response to the outcry or due to the logistical hurdles of taking down advertisements the previous administration had already paid for. Either way, it egged on health law advocates.

I was surprised, and I think there was a clear lesson: Activism, and outreach to others, can and already has had an impact, says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a group that advocates in the laws favor. This is encouragement for people to be active and make a difference, even in the context of the Republican Party having the levers of power in the White House.

More such news came this week, when Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) tweeted that she would oppose the nomination of Betsy DeVos for education secretary after receiving a wave of negative feedback from her constituents.

After careful consideration, and hearing from Alaskans, I will vote against Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education: https://t.co/u7sNCPUH3d.

Obamacare repeal, Dahman said, is something legislators should be pushed to answer on in a similar way.

If theyre going to take health care away from millions, they need to have the input of constituents, he says. And if theyre not going to meet with constituents, that is going to draw some ire.

Dahman doesnt quite know where Town Hall Project 2018 goes next although its growing much faster than he expected. He now has 100 volunteers helping him update the spreadsheet, which grows day by day with new events.

Two days ago, I spent maybe a couple hours a day training volunteers and responding to volunteers, he says. The last two days, though, Ive been flooded by emails, Facebook messages, and tweets. Ive done 15- to 16-hour days, trying to respond to everybody in a timely fashion.

Dahman expects things will heat up even more when Congress goes on recess, a moment when legislators tend to hold more events in home districts. Again, this would be a parallel to the 2009 Tea Party protests, which got especially heated over the 2009 summer recess.

Clancy, the Tea Party activist, sees the appeal of the moment for liberals. There's nothing more American than protest, and few things more enjoyable, he says. I suspect Trump must appear to them as Obama appeared to us, as a threat to everything we believe and cherish. You have to respect them for resisting that.

Correction: Rep. Peter Roskam did not cancel his health care meeting, but rescheduled it as it was an event for constituents only and a reporter arrived.

Here is the original post:
Liberals are the new Tea Party - Vox

Forbes

Liberals Paint Gorsuch As `Dangerous,' `Radical' `Extremist.' Really? Forbes According to liberal groups including the Center for American Progress, Lambda Legal, Physicians for Reproductive Health and the Sierra Club, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is a conservative extremist, unacceptable, and dangerous. Really ... Liberals Have No Case Against GorsuchBloomberg Lower conduct standards for liberalsThe Daily Citizen Why Liberals Should Back Neil GorsuchNew York Times The Durango Herald -Hot Air all 5,796 news articles »

See more here:
Liberals Paint Gorsuch As `Dangerous,' `Radical' `Extremist.' Really? - Forbes

Many have long suspected that if you scratch an American liberal, you will find a budding fascist. I mean that in the literal sense, not as a general epithet. More and more, liberals are openly embracing violence as a path to power. Not just the nuts, either: their recently-defeated vice-presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, has called on his fellow liberals to become street fighting men. Our friends at Grabien have assembled this montage of liberals advocating, and in some cases actually committing, political violence:

Can you imagine the uproar if Donald Trump told his supporters they should start fighting in the streets, and subsequently gangs of rioting Republicans smashed windows with crowbars, beat unconscious Democrats in the street, started vehicles on fire, and so on? No, actually, I dont think any of us can imagine what the reaction would be. A coup, maybe.

And yet, has a single prominent Democrat condemned either the calls for violence, or the actuality of violence carried out by liberals? To my knowledge, no.

Continued here:
Liberals Embrace Violence - Power Line (blog)

Uber CEOs bland response to the Presidents three months immigration ban has put him in the crosshairs of liberal zealots, who regard themselves as progressive. The same thing happened to Silicon Valleys poster child, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, for not criticizing the ban more resolutely. These bullied dignitaries did not agree with Trump. Their only sin was that they did not chastise him with a torrent of slurs and profanities, as is commonplace these days among the enlightened left.

Before the elections, the press was concerned with the question, What happens if Donald Trump loses? Los Angeles Times reporter Doyle McManus, like many other liberal journalists, did not even consider the possibility that Trump might win, and concluded that after Trumps loss, its hard to imagine that Trump will simply fade away.

But Donald Trump won, and his surprise victory exposed the true face of progressive liberalism in America. There are ample examples of the undemocratic nature of todays American liberalism, such as their latest attempt at stymying the formation of the countrys government. Yet, perhaps the most authentic testimony I have seen came from a student of mine who wrote me about the situation in the Northeast, on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from liberals and progressives. Below is just some of what my student wrote.

We grew up in this liberal bubble, a fantasy land. Our English classes required we read liberal books that championed the plight of immigrant minorities while condemning the westerner as the perpetual antagonist.

I like to think I have a decent moral compass. I take no pleasure in disagreeing with the trend. A person is terrified to say he is not liberal. Universities and schools raised us to breathe the notion that non-liberals are racist, backwards, white, old, men, and bigots.

Right now, what I see in the liberal-left is the new fascist ideology. They are the least embracing group in this country. Somehow, we have arrived where our society is an eggshell of political correctness. Everything is racist. Jerry Seinfeld made a joke about his friend whose last name is black. He said Black's life matters. It was funny, but Seinfeld was almost crucified for racism. This is a sickness.

I am a progressive. I define progressivism as openness to all opinions, challenging everything. I also see myself as a champion of the oppressed. The oppressed right now are the Trump votersthe people who are not represented by Hollywood, the media, or tech and financial institutions where H-1B visa immigrants have all the good paying jobs.

I'm very alarmed at my generation's insensitivity to those with a different opinion than theirs. Trump is obviously not always right. But the outright temper-tantrum the left and my generation are having right now is a turn-off. They are entitled and SAD!

In the late 1940s, Baal HaSulam, my teachers father and the author of the Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Zohar, wrote about the inherent problems of democracy in his compilation, The Writings of the Last Generation. According to Baal HaSulam, We should not learn from the modern democracies, as they use various tactics to deceive the constituency. When [voters] grow wiser and understand their [leaders] cunningness, the majority will certainly elect a management according to their spirit. And their [leaders] main tactic is that they first create a good reputation for people and promote them either as wise or as righteous, and then the masses believe and elect them. But a lie does not persist forever.

Moreover, later in the book, Baal HaSulam writes, Reality proves that the step following the ruin of a democratic government is that of Nazis or Fascists. Whenever the democratic government is ruined, a fascist, Nazi regime will inherit it. Indeed, the exposure of the fanaticism of American liberalism proves that Baal HaSulams analysis was dead on. The liberals are showing their true, fascist faces. Ironically, it was acclaimed liberal progressive author and journalist, Nicholas Kristof, who best described the liberal dichotomy in a column he wrote for The New York Times titled, A Confession of Liberal Intolerance. According to Kristof, We progressives could take a brief break from attacking the other side and more broadly incorporate values that we supposedly cherishlike diversityin our own dominions. Today, without proper measures to mend Americas perilous trajectory, the fallouts for the American society and for the world at large could be horrendous.

Establishing Sustainable Pluralism A government whose leaders are in office for a fixed and relatively short term requires certain preconditions in order to succeed. While term limits guarantee that no leader becomes a monarch, they also compel candidates to vie for campaign funds and seek the benefit of their big donors every four years. This inevitably makes lawmakers and leaders hostages in the hands of a powerful few who exact their fees after the election, in complete disregard of the public interest. The inevitable outcome of this skewed system is a parade of puppet presidents who dance to the dictates of their donors, as we have seen for the past several decades. The wealthy elite are the real rulers of the United States; the governmenta reality TV show.

As Baal HaSulam said in the above quote, todays heads of state cannot be elected unless they are advertised like a commodity until the public buys the stories sold about them. In such a state, the president is not elected based on leadership skills, but based on acting skills and amicability. Are these the right criteria for choosing a nations leader?

To elect good leaders, people must determine what they want to see in a leader. If the constituency has the interest of the entire nation at heart, they will elect leaders based on the interest of the entirety of the country. In the case of America, for people to have such a broad view they must care for America, and especially for the American people, all American people.

Lessons from the Past In todays era of extreme self-absorption, the only way to restore stability to the American society is to embrace plurality rather than reject it. If the liver and heart fought over blood because they both need it for survival, we would die. But their complementary functionality guarantees that we have a toxin free flow of blood to the entire body.

Likewise, every person in humanity is important because health and strength are achieved when we unite above our differences, and not when we exhaust ourselves trying to be the last one standing. The constant battle we are fighting with each other is exactly how cancer behaves toward the rest of the body, and we know how this ends for the cancer and for us.

When the ancient Israelites connected above their differences, they managed to build a nation out of millions of separate individuals. Once they pledged to unite as one man with one heart, they were tasked with passing the method for connection to the rest of the world. The Torah defined this task as being a light unto nations because today disunity is darkening peoples lives. When depression, violence, and alienation are engulfing all of humanity, unity is the only possible light at the end of the tunnel, however dim or faint.

In Olat Raiah, the great Rav Kook wrote, Unity that strives to benefit each individual is unsustainable. Even when it seems to grow, it will end in a flame of hatred and war among brothers, since each one is pulling in his own direction. However, unity that derives from recognizing the value of love of others will last and strengthen over time.

Indeed, Israels method for achieving unity can succeed precisely in a state of social disintegration and alienation because it is designed for such a state. It does not dread frictions; it embraces them as tools for achieving greater unity and social cohesion.

My students all over the world carry out this method, which they titled, Integral Education, and prove repeatedly that people of different backgrounds can unite if they are willing to rise above their differences. They need not suppress their views like todays intimidated supporters of the President.

I think that Americas strength and stability are too important to the world for this country to behave recklessly. I think it must reinstate the value of embracing all views. Only when America does this can it begin to cautiously open its gates to immigrants. However, even then it must be done on condition that immigrants also embrace the values of pluralism and unity as the basis of democracy.

In the coming years, the global challenges will increase and intensify. The basis for successful coping with these challenges is unity. If America establishes this, it will succeed. If not, it will end up like Europe. Michael Laitman is a Professor of Ontology, a PhD in Philosophy and Kabbalah, an MSc in Medical Bio-Cybernetics, and was the prime disciple of Kabbalist, Rav Baruch Shalom Ashlag (the RABASH). He has written over 40 books, which have been translated into dozens of languages. Click Here to visit his author page.

Relevant to your professional network? Please share on Linkedin

Read the rest here:
The true face of liberalism - Jerusalem Post Israel News