Australians care if politicians tell lies, but people in the US don't

4 January 2019

By Michael Le Page

The US may have entered a “post-truth” era, but Australia has not. Researchers who asked people in the US their views on politicians who frequently bend the truth found that fact-checking had little impact, whereas for Australians it did change their political opinions.

The findings in Australia are positive and encouraging, says team member Stephan Lewandowsky of the University of Bristol in the UK. They suggest fact-checking is a genuine counter to politicians who regularly make false statements.

“People like a politician less if they find out they have been lied to a lot,” says Lewandowsky. “It’s a reasonably large effect.”

But when the team did a follow-up study in the US, the size of the effect was ten times smaller. “We have a lot of information now suggesting American voters don’t really care about facts, in the sense that if you tell them a politician is dishonest it doesn’t really seem to matter,” says Lewandowsky.

More:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2189545-australians-care-if-politicians-tell-lies-but-people-in-the-us-dont/