In the Political Accuracy and Divisions Study (PADS), we conducted an extensive survey of over 3,000 American adults to assess their accuracy about a variety of controversial topics including, abortion, immigration, gender, race, crime, and the economy. So much of our political discourse revolves around these topics—but how much do we really know about these issues and the views of our fellow Americans? How informed are the loudest, most politically confident voices? We will examine the prevalence of misconceptions across the political continuum, and in doing so, we hope to offer a means by which to improve the quality of our national discourse.
For additional information, please feel free to contact the Skeptic Research Center by email: [email protected].
DATA BRIEFS
Additional data briefs that were shared on Twitter (X)
REPORT (PADS-011)
Younger Generations are Least Accurate About Police Shootings and Least Trusting of Police
Eleventh report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
Amidst the George Floyd anti-police riots, the Skeptic Research Center showed that Americans’ anti-police attitudes were influenced to a significant degree by their ignorance about the number of unarmed Black men shot by police (McCaffree & Saide, 2021; Saide, McCaffree & McCready, 2021). Probably due in part to mainstream media’s constant portrayals of police as bloodthirsty racist killers (e.g., Balko, 2022; Thompson, 2021), we found that Americans identifying as “very liberal” were extremely misinformed, with nearly 54% believing 1,000 or more unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019, and with over 22% of “very liberals” believing the number was 10,000 or more (the actual number is around 10). Given Americans’ continued fledgling trust in police–64% of Americans reported high levels of trust in police in 2004 compared to 43% in 2023 (Gallup Polling, 2023)—in this report we ask: how does Americans’ accuracy about policing vary by generation, and how does being inaccurate about policing relate to trust of police?
REPORT (PADS-010)
Are Americans Losing Their Trust?
Tenth report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
Public opinion polling has revealed unprecedented drops in Americans’ institutional trust for several years now, and institutional trust reached a new low in 2023 (Jones, 2022; Saad, 2023). Americans’ trust in government, for example, is hovering at its lowest point since Pew polling began measuring it in 1958 (Pew Research Center, 2023). In 1973, 58% of Americans had “a great deal”/“quite a lot” of confidence in public schools—by 2023, this had fallen to 26%. Also in 1973, 42% of Americans had “a great deal”/“quite a lot” of confidence in Congress—by 2023, this had fallen to 8%. In 1975, 80% of people had “a great deal”/ “quite a lot” of confidence in the medical system, but by 2023, this number had fallen to 33% (the decline began long before COVID). And also across many other American institutions (see Gallup Polling, 2023). Some polling also suggests Americans have been losing trust in each other (not just in abstract institutional “systems”). For example, Pew polling found that 64% of Americans felt that trust in one another has “been shrinking,” (Rainie et al., 2019). In light of these concerning trends, we looked back through two of our own polls (one conducted in 2021, the other in 2022) and asked: how have Americans’ trust in institutions and each other changed?
REPORT (PADS-009)
Being “Liberal” in America
Ninth report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
Analysts have recognized for decades now that the world is becoming more liberal. It seems that the more removed people are from basic survival concerns, the more liberal their worldviews become, in the sense of being more accepting of cultural differences and more protective of civil rights. Some analysts have noted how paradoxically intolerant and dogmatic this trend has become in Western societies (i.e., the societies most removed from basic survival concerns): amongst many Western progressives, for example, all group disadvantages are assumed to always be a result of oppression, with oppression always being driven by white people (and usually men). Thus, it would seem that at the extremes, liberalism and the human tendency towards tribalism interact to produce both a demand for equality and justice as well as an insistence that one demographic group (white/European people) is accountable for most or all of the oppression and corruption in the world. In light of the controversies and nuances inherent in identifying as a modern liberal, in this report we ask: how do rates of identifying as “liberal” vary in the United States according to peoples’ generation, sex and race?
REPORT (PADS-008)
The Essence of Americans
Eighth report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
Part of human reasoning involves reducing people, animals, and things to their core essence, a tendency beginning in childhood (Ahn et al., 2001; Gelman, 2003). We define dogs and cats by different essences, for example, and we do the same for people when we define them by their sex, race, age, and the like. Though helpful as a crude way of categorizing things in the world, essentialism makes us prone to error. Believing, for example, that water is defined by the essential element of “wetness” will fail to recognize ice as water; or, believing that those with recent European ancestry are defined by the essential element of “whiteness” will fail to recognize variations in cultural background or individual experience (Roth et al., 2023). While essentialism feels useful in its simplifying of an otherwise complex reality, it can lead to negative stereotyping. Given that essentialist reasoning typically produces rigid categorizations of people, and that rigid categorizations of people might be conducive to political misinformation, conspiracism, or extremism (e.g., Buhagiar et al., 2018; Kurzwelly et al., 2020), in this report we ask: how common is the tendency to essentialize amongst the American public?
REPORT (PADS-007)
How Accurate Are Americans About Economic Mobility?
Seventh report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
According to economists at Stanford University, economic mobility is a “fading American dream.” Richard Delgado, a founder of critical race theory, calls upward mobility a “myth” and suggests that, “the myth of upward mobility enables the wealthy to justify favorable treatment for themselves and cutbacks for the rest,” while reminding us that, “study after study shows that class membership in our society is relatively fixed.” In agreement, the Huffington Post regards economic class in America as “suffocating,” Mother Jones insists that America is a “thriving aristocracy” maintained by “powerful-yet-obscure entities,” and the New York Times informs us that class in America is a “caste system,” and that “the hierarchy of caste is… about power — which groups have it and which do not. It is about resources — which groups are seen as worthy of them, and which are not.” These claims are not new. As far back as 1897, Carrol D. Wright, the first commissioner of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, noted that, “the assertion that the rich are growing richer and the poor poorer has…taken more complete possession of the popular mind than any other.” Yet, Wright went on to say that this assertion “is a false one, false in its premises and misleading in its influence.” Is poverty ubiquitous in America? Do people have any chance of improving their economic circumstances? To assess these claims and what Americans think about them, in this report we ask: how accurate are Americans about economic mobility?
REPORT (PADS-006)
Depression and Political Ideology
Sixth report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
Is life in America hopeless? In a peer-reviewed article entitled “Fuck the patriarchy: Towards an intersectional politics of irreverent rage,” sociologist Helen Wood suggests that, “with climate change [and] widening inequality… we are truly fucked” (Wood, 2019). In 2020, Chad Wolf, acting U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary, declared white supremacy to be the most persistent and lethal domestic threat to the United States (Behrmann, 2020). A recent New York Times feature article described one professor’s struggle to remove “whiteness” from universities given that the study of classic literature, “has been instrumental to the invention of ‘whiteness’ and its continued domination” (Poser, 2021). Some popular academic theories even doubt the possibility of moral progress (Seamster & Ray, 2018). But in 2021, a Manhattan Institute report found, among other things, that reading social justice scholarship significantly reduced Black Americans’ hopefulness and motivation (Kaufmann, 2021). The author of the report speculated that, though intended to empower women and racial minorities, misleading characterizations of America as a white supremacist patriarchy may do the exact opposite. In light of this possibility, in this report we asked: “How is mental health related to believing this popular political rhetoric?”
Follow-up to PADS-006
Posted on Twitter on August 3, 2023
Download “Depression and Political Ideology” (PADS-006F)
REPORT (PADS-005)
How Informed Are Americans About Women’s Opportunities?
Fifth report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
Feminist academics argue that “patriarchy,” or the oppression of women in society by men, affects both public and private life. They argue, for example, that male managers exploit their female colleagues in the workplace, male script writers perpetuate demeaning views of women and girls on television, husbands force their wives into near-constant subservience in the home, and that patriarchy not only prevents women from succeeding in society but also causes numerous other problems (Bates, 2021). One activist wrote, “We need…to deconstruct and exorcise patriarchy – which is the root of so many other forms of oppression, from imperialism to racism, from transphobia to the denigration of the Earth” (Ensler, 2021). In apparent agreement, the American Psychological Association now regards masculinity as “harmful” (APA, 2018). Additionally, according to leading sociologist Barbara Risman and others, “challenging men’s dominance is [also] a necessary condition of ending the subordination of lesbians and gay men,” and that, “If as feminists, we believe that gender is socially constructed and used to create inequality, our political goal must be to move to a post-gender society” (Risman, 2004; 2009). Due to the alarming nature of these claims, in this report we ask: “How informed are Americans about women’s achievements and opportunities?”
REPORT (PADS-004)
Are “White People” Morally Deviant?
Fourth report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
For decades in the U.S., and particularly in the last few years, journalists and intellectuals have suggested that “white people” are socially or morally deviant. Time magazine, for example, published the claim that white supremacy is the “foundational principle” of culture in the U.S., preventing non-whites from having “perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect grades…[or regarded as a] perfect employee and colleague.” In 2020, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture claimed “rational thinking” and “hard work” are white supremacist ideals that oppress non-whites. In a recent opinion editorial, Savala Nolan, the Executive Director of the Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law, said “white people…disappoint me. They frustrate me. They make me sad.” Meanwhile, books describing the immorality of white people, such as Caste, How to be an Anti-Racist, and White Fragility have all soared to the top of the New York Times Bestseller List. Given these strong opinions, in this report we ask: what does the public really think about the (apparent) immorality of white people?
Follow-up to PADS-004
Posted on Twitter on June 13, 2023
Download “Noble Savage Myth and Education” (PADS-004F)
REPORT (PADS-003)
Update: How Informed are Americans about Race and Policing?
Third report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
“Defund the police” was the rallying cry of liberals in the Summer of 2020, motivating “mostly peaceful” protests that led to property damage in excess of two billion dollars across at least 20 US states (Johansmeyer, 2021). To better understand the motivation behind these protests, in 2020, we surveyed people about their estimates of the number of unarmed black men shot by police in 2019 and found a shocking degree of inaccuracy, particularly amongst progressives. In this report, we present an update on these data and ask: have people become more knowledgeable when it comes to the available data on fatal police shootings of unarmed black Americans?
REPORT (PADS-002)
Trans, Identity and Institutional Controversies
Second report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
A particularly salient culture-war issue in contemporary American society concerns the relationship between gender identity and biological sex. While some insist that peoples’ subjective interpretation of their sex is paramount, others insist objective markers (like chromosomes) are practically more relevant. Most recently, this issue has been enflamed by two central institutional controversies: biological males identifying as women competing in women’s sports leagues and sex/gender-oriented material being taught to young children in schools. Disagreement abounds, with liberals sometimes downplaying the severity of these controversies, and conservatives doing the opposite. In this report, we ask: what do Americans really think about these issues?
REPORT (PADS-001)
What Do Americans Believe About Abortion and How Accurate Are They?
First report in the Political Accuracy & Divisions Study (PADS)
In this report, one of a series of reports on controversial topics in American culture, we investigated the degree to which partisans in the United States hold accurate beliefs about abortion and about each other. Herein, we covered three central questions in the American abortion debate:
- What abortion policies do Americans really prefer?
- How accurate are Americans’ beliefs about the prevalence of abortion and the recent Supreme Court ruling, and what variables influence their accuracy?
- How accurate are Americans regarding the abortion beliefs of other people?
The over-arching goal of this report was thus to contribute to our collective understanding of what Americans really believe, as well as how accurate they are about the topic of abortion and about one another.
