In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Leann Mclaren, covers the new article by Matthew H. Graham, Temple University, “Measuring Misperceptions?”.
With politicians like Kari Lake refusing to accept Arizona’s midterm election results, even though the Associated Press has called the race in her opponent’s favor (with 99% reporting) the topic of misperception, or willingness to hold onto claims that have been proven false, has been a topic of increased interest.
Matthew Graham in his latest work in the APSR finds that capturing the extent to which misperceptions exist in the electorate, as well as what these people’s beliefs are, may be trickier than we think. In the article Graham investigates different methods in discerning between people who are just ignorant and lack political knowledge (or just randomly guessing), and people who willfully hold onto beliefs that are factually incorrect. Graham ends up concluding that most people in his studies were simply ignorant and/or lacked confidence in their answers on questions concerning popular controversies. This may point to a reconsideration on both how many people are actually holding onto factually incorrect rhetoric, and ways in which researchers can capture and analyze these beliefs in the American public.
Graham’s motivation for approaching this study is due to a disconnect between...
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