And if the march remains high, two researchers from the University of Illinois have concluded, it is because, of all our biases, it would be the partisan bias that has the biggest impact. In other words, our definition of a fact is greatly influenced by the political party for which we vote.
Beyond its importance in the fight against disinformation, “the ability to differentiate between a statement of opinion and a statement of fact is vital for the citizen who must manage the flow of political information he receives every day,” comments in the press release University of Illinois political scientist Jeffery J. Mondak of the Center for the Social Science of Behavior.
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The two authors of the researchpublished in Misinformation Reviewasked participants to identify which of 12 statements with a political or social flavor was fact or opinion. 46% of participants failed to clearly identify 6 or more statements.
However, when we analyze their errors, we notice that most often, the participants chose the answer that allowed them to stick to their political allegiance. The level of education, knowledge of current events, and cognitive abilities of the participants only influenced the answers on which they were not biased at the start.
This is of course not the only study in recent years that has shown that most people often have trouble distinguishing fact from opinion. But it is a reminder that often the root of the problem is not just that people disagree about facts, but that they even disagree about what constitutes fact.
Other research earlier this year concluded that this extends to the perception of having had side effects after getting the COVID vaccine. Last March, a study from the University of Pennsylvania had indeed concluded that in the United States, the more Republican a region voted, the more likely its patients were to claim to have had side effects from one of the COVID vaccines.
More specifically, a 10% increase in Republican votes in the 2020 presidential election appeared to be associated, when comparing each county, with a 5% increase in the number of reported side effects, and more importantly, a 25% greater chance of having reported serious side effects.
And such partisan bias in health can have even more serious impacts: in 2022-2023, COVID-19 mortality rates were measured to be higher in counties across the United States. who voted the most for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. This is a fact that we cannot help but link to the fact that these are also the states in the United States that voted the most for the Republican party in the 2020 elections, which recorded the lowest rates of vaccination against COVID.
