No one seriously questions that our immigration system is broken, but even with plenty of legitimate reasons to support comprehensive reform, Donald Trump chooses to engage in fiction to gain votes.
Why? Because lying works; voters don’t question what they hear.
And, yes, Democrats also lie. It’s just that Trump has elevated lying to a whole new level.
First, let’s look at what we’re hearing. Trump tell us, “hundreds of thousands of people, between the drugs that come in the border and all of the death that’s brought into the border in so many different ways,” are being killed annually.
Let’s look at the facts.
A team of economists at Northwestern University analyzed data over a 150-year span and found immigrants were consistently less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the U.S. Beginning in 1960, the incarceration gap widened. Immigrants are now 60% less likely to be incarcerated than U.S. born citizens, and 30% less likely relative to U.S. born whites.
Economist Ron Abramitsky calls the connection between immigration and higher crime rates—a long standing trope in American politics—“a myth.”
Politicians lie because, as psychologist Christian L. Hart, Ph.D., sees it, they see a benefit from lying. It’s an acceptable risk, and politicians can morally justify their dishonesty. In a way, lying is a necessary part of the job, not a character flaw.
Psychologist Jim Taylor, Ph.D., attributes lying to narcissism. Politicians who are arrogant and self-important believe they’re always right; even if they’re not right, think they’re too smart to be caught or suffer the consequences. “Politicians know their followers will believe them, even in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary.”
Much of the problem, Taylor tells us, is with ourselves. Voters don’t want to hear anything that “threaten[s] their existence, their beliefs, or that will make them uncomfortable,” and so politicians tell voters what they want to hear, not what they need to hear.
And once a message is found on the internet, it takes on new life. People are more likely to believe unsubstantiated rumors about a political candidate when those stories appear in emails and on blogs.
Adding to the problem is truth bias. We’re more likely to judge statements as true than false, and we’re “not particularly skilled at detecting deception,” academics Kyle Mattes, Valeriia Popova and Jacqueline R. Evans tell us.
Why is this? Our brains are governed by myriad “cognitive biases that push us toward decisions based not on facts and logic, but on instincts that can be at odds with facts and logic,” explains psychologist Daniel Kahneman. These biases provide a shortcut to making decisions faster and easier.
The anchoring effect tends to give priority to information received early that affects our view of subsequently received information. Because of choice supportive bias, we give positive qualities to a position we’ve chosen simply because we’ve chosen it.
Groupthink bias causes us to believe things because other people do, and confirmation bias causes us to force every idea we encounter to fit the initial conclusion we came up with concerning a subject. If new ideas don’t fit, they’re rejected.
It’s easy to blame politicians for lying, but that’s the easy way out. It’s up to voters to be mindful of their own biases and to think critically about what they hear and read.
Operate from a position of skepticism.
If what you’re hearing or reading sounds a bit outrageous, check another source. If a politician says something you’ve never heard before, see what the political fact-checkers have to say. Investigate what news services on both sides of the political spectrum are reporting. Ask your friends if they’ve heard a different message.
All this takes work, but politicians lie because voters have shown them they can get away with it.
[This post was previously published as an op-ed in The Columbus Dispatch on September 11, 2024.]
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Jack D’Aurora writes for Considerthisbyjd.com
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Also published on Medium.
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