According to recent research, people are more willing to share knowingly false information if they believe that in the future this lie may become true.
“In this era of ‘post-truth’, disinformation spreads not only because people believe the propaganda, but also because they sometimes give deliberate lies a ‘moral pass’,” write researchers from the London Business School.
That is, it seems to people not so unethical to spread lies if they believe that at some point it can turn into the truth. This psychological mechanism, in particular, is used by populist politicians. They make, to put it mildly, ambiguous statements to their supporters, which they willingly disseminate — because they unconditionally believe in the pictures of the future drawn by the idol, scientists say.
To understand how this works in practice, the researchers conducted six experiments involving over 3600 volunteers.
During each experiment, the participants were told various statements that were clearly false, and then asked them to think about how this disinformation could turn into the truth in the future.
So, in one of the experiments, 447 students of the London Business School, who came from 59 countries of the world, took part. The students were asked to imagine that their friend had lied on his resume — he indicated that he had a skill in financial modeling, which he actually did not have experience.
The participants were then presented with a possible situation in which this lie would become true: “If your friend takes a course in financial modeling over the summer, he will have this skill.” As a result, the lie of a friend no longer seemed so unacceptable to the students.
In another experiment, 599 Americans were presented with six deliberately false political statements, crafted in such a way that they could be attributed to the Republican or Democratic parties. Then some of the participants were asked to make a prediction for each of the statements about how it might become true in the future.
It turned out that as soon as people think about this topic, it begins to seem to them that any, even the most notorious disinformation, contains a grain of truth, which will eventually come out.
Therefore, there is nothing shameful in disseminating such information. Moreover, this effect is especially pronounced if the false statement corresponds to the political views of the person. Even when the researchers asked the participants to think twice before deciding whether it was okay to share what they considered “promising” information on social media, they didn’t change their minds.
These are very disturbing results, demonstrating the dangerous consequences that political propaganda in the media can have, the scientists say. Statements that may eventually become true are not verifiable — unlike the real truth.
That is why it is so difficult to convince people who fanatically believe that every false statement has a true essence. And that it will certainly manifest itself in the future.
Source: article in