Political Misinformation And What To Do About It
How Severe is the Problem? “Many people are likely to be misinformed, not only inaccurate in their factual beliefs but confident that they are right.” So say Kuklinski and collegues (2000, p.809); modest enough, but in the same article, they find that most people are misinformed about welfare, crime, the proportion of minorities (see also Wong et al., 2012), and foreign affairs (see also Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2010). Other scholars have observed severe misinformation on issues ranging from the economy (Bartels, 2002) to national debt and tax policy (Flynn et al.