Determinants of success at fact-opinion differentiation. plots are predicted probabilities (with 95% confidence intervals) drawn from grouped-data multinomial logit models; see appendix for full results. horizontal axes range from the lowest to the highest scale value for each variable. Unbiased error is a residual category that includes errors resulting from processes other than partisan bias. Credit: Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (2024). DOI: 10.37016/mr-2020-136
Phil Ciciora -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
March 12, 2024
How well do Americans succeed at distinguishing statements of fact from statements of opinion? The answer: Not very well at all, according to new research co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign scholars.
Americans struggle to tell the difference between statements of fact and statements of opinion -- a troubling trend that has grave implications for civic discourse and for navigating the torrent of political information that citizens receive every day, said Jeffery J. Mondak, a professor of political science and the James M. Benson Chair in Public Issues and Civic Leadership at Illinois.
"The capacity to differentiate between a statement of opinion and a statement of fact is vital for citizens to manage the flood of political information they receive on any given day," said Mondak, a co-author of the research and an affiliate of the Center for Social and Behavioral Science. "There's a huge amount of research on misinformation. But what we found is that, even before we get to the stage of labeling something misinformation, people often have trouble discerning the difference between statements of fact and opinion."
"We also see a lot of research on misinformation that comes at the problem from the angle of, 'How are we doing in terms of playing whack-a-mole with misinformation? Are we able to fact check them and rebut these claims?' Well, that isn't necessarily a useful way of getting at the root cause of the problem," said Matthew Mettler, a U. of I. graduate student and co-author of the paper.
The study, published by the Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, examined whether Americans can differentiate statements of fact (2 + 2 = 4, for example) versus statements of opinion ("Green is the most beautiful color"), with a particular focus on political statements.
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