Political Ideology and Accuracy of Information
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Political Ideology and Accuracy of Information Lynnette Whitsitt 1 & Robert L. Williams 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Abstract Understanding our nation’s government and the politics involved is essential, but political issues are sometimes considered too sensitive to discuss in educational settings. Without classroom-based discussions, how accurate are students in judging the accuracy of political statements, especially in in today’s “fake news” climate? To generate a possible answer to this question, we examined students’ accuracy in judging political claims regarding events occurring in President Trump’s first year in office, as well as the relationship between political ideology and accuracy of non-political judgements. Results showed that a higher percentage of students in a southeastern state university identified themselves as liberals than was the case in our past research with students at this particular university. The principal finding of the study we report in this article was that conservative students were less accurate in judging false political statements than were liberal and independent students. Political ideology was not related to the accuracy of academic judgments. Both critical thinking scores and political ideology predicted accuracy in judging false political statements. Keywords Political ideology . Accurate political claims . False political claims . Fake news Scarred by the uncivil discourse dominating the 2016 election, a smattering of educators in the U.S. are hesitating or refraining from discussing politics with their students (Hartle, 2017; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016a, 2016b). Relatively recent research has also shown that the introduction of research information associated with political identity and political issues Lynnette Whitsitt is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling of the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She earned her B.S. from The University of Evansville. She researches student writing and college student success. Email: [email protected]. Robert Williams has a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from George Peabody College and is a Professor of Educational Psychology at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research interests include critical thinking, sociopolitical values, and cooperative learning. He is the corresponding author for this study. Email: [email protected]
* Robert L. Williams [email protected]
1
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA
Innovative Higher Education
may be regarded by some students as favoring a particular political ideology and discrediting other ideologies (Linville & Mazer, 2013). Even reference to the highly objective research evidence on political issues may be viewed with considerable skepticism by some students and as information too sensitive to include in classroom lectures and discussions. However, if scholars view education as a domain where an
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