The Waters of Casablanca: Political Misinformation (and Knowledge and Ignorance)

The complement of knowledge (of knowable things) is not simply ignorance (the absence of relevant cognition). There is also misinformation (the presence of inaccurate cognition). But separating misinformation from ignorance (and knowledge) can be both conceptually and operationally challenging. This paper is the first stage of a larger project aimed at considering the nature, frequency, sources, and consequences of misinformation, as distinct from both knowledge and ignorance. Here we begin by considering conceptual issues (what counts as correct and thus as incorrect; what constitutes stored cognition, as distinct from fresh inference about a factual question never previously considered, etc.) and distinctions (between denial (rejecting uncongenial truths) and invention (accepting congenial fictions), etc.). The paper then turns to measurement. The trick here is to distinguish incorrect responses representing misinformation from those representing unlucky guessing or erroneous inference (just as the trick in measuring knowledge is to distinguish correct responses representing knowledge from those representing lucky guessing or astute inference). Since open-ended knowledge items produce many fewer correct or incorrect responses masquerading as knowledge or misinformation (as opposed to frank admissions of ignorance), we focus mainly on closed-ended items. Finally, we examine the question of who, on given questions, is misinformed versus ignorant versus knowledgeable. We suspect, on the basis of theory and other research, that Republicans/conservatives are more knowledgeable (and less ignorant) but also more misinformed than Democrats/liberals. We shall see. The data will come from a mix of ANES studies, pre-deliberation measurements from deliberative Polls, our own past experimental surveys, and, above all, our own new experimental survey to be completed this in the next couple of months. The experimental surveys include a range of novel probes and variations to help sift both misinformation and knowledge from guessing and inference.