The new “NYT/CBS poll”:http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/us/politics/22republicans.html?_r=3 — in which 47% of Republican voters aid that Obama was not born in the US — is getting attention. Ben Smith “weighs in”:http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0411/All_birthers_now.html:
bq. What does this mean? I find it hard to believe that millions of Republicans have looked at the non-existent evidence and soberly concluded this. It seems that answering “was Obama born in a foreign country” elicits from Republicans the sort of response from Republicans that “is George W. Bush a moron” would have elicited from Democrats — a way to express reflexive hostility. That that reflex takes the form of bizarre fantasy isn’t terribly cheering.
Smith is not the only one to suggest that such beliefs about Obama are a form of partisan cheerleading. “Here”:http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenumbers/2010/08/this-i-believe.html is Gary Langer on the belief that Obama is a Muslim:
bq. People in fact may voice an attitude not as an affirmed belief – a statement of perceived factual reality – but rather as what my colleagues and I have taken to calling “expressed belief” – a statement intended to send a message, not claim a known fact. It’s human nature. Some people who strongly oppose a person or proposition will take virtually any opportunity to express that antipathy. Offer a negative attribute, they’ll grab it – not to express their “belief,” in its conventional meaning, but rather to throw verbal stones at that which they so thoroughly dislike.
Okay, maybe. Could be. But here are two things that may suggest otherwise. First, the Pew question on Obama’s religion (see “this pdf”:http://pewforum.org/uploadedFiles/Topics/Issues/Politics_and_Elections/growingnumber-topline.pdf) reads like this:
bq. Now, thinking about Barack Obama’s religious beliefs… Do you happen to know what Barack Obama’s religion is? Is he Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, agnostic, or something else?
Langer’s notion suggests that some Republicans would be willing to offer a “negative” attribute, but it doesn’t help us explain why people are so much more likely to say “Muslim” than, say, “atheist” — a response that very few of the Pew respondents said. The belief that Obama is a Muslim might be something more than just knee-jerk antipathy.
Second, a new paper suggests that partisan beliefs are not necessarily cheerleading. They might be real beliefs. In this paper, John Bullock, Alan Gerber, and Greg Huber asked subjects a series of factual questions where partisans would have an incentive to give an answer that is wrong but accords with their partisan proclivities. None of these were questions about Obama’s birthplace or religion. One example is: “Compared to January 2009, when President Obama first took office, how has the federal budget deficit changed? Has it decreased, increased, or stayed the same?” Republicans are more likely than Democrats to give the correct answer (increased).
In answering these questions, people were randomly assigned to be paid different amounts for each correct answer, or to be paid nothing. The amounts of money were not large: at most, people could make $20. But still, if answers were nothing more than reflexive cheerleading — as opposed to sincere beliefs — you might expect that a quick $20 would dissuade some people from answering only to satisfy their desire to cheer for their team.
The result? The money didn’t make much difference. Bullock, Gerber, and Huber conclude:
bq. Our experiment is consistent with the suggestion that partisan gaps are due chiefly to sincere differences of belief between members of different parties…Offering subjects fixed amounts of money for correct answers had slightly greater effects, but even at their most effective, they reduced the average partisan gap in correct responding by only 50%.
Bullock and colleagues are quick to acknowledge that perhaps the experiment didn’t offer a strong enough incentive. What if it were $200 instead of $20? Etc. So this study certainly doesn’t resolve the debate about whether birther attitudes are really true beliefs.
But it does suggest we shouldn’t attribute them solely to reflex.