Individual Differences in Resistance to Truth Decay: Exploring the Role of Reasoning and Cognitive Biases

Abstract

The concept of Truth Decay was introduced by Kavanagh and Rich (2018) and defined according to four societal trends: heightened disagreement about facts and analytical interpretations of facts and data, blurring of the line between opinion and fact, an increase in the relative volume and influence of opinion and personal experience over fact, and diminished trust in formerly respected institutions as sources of factual information.In this report, we examine a proposed driver of this societal phenomenon: characteristics of human cognitive processing (such as cognitive biases). We conduct our examination within the context of social and demographic control variables. We describe our development of a survey measure to assess resistance/susceptibility to Truth Decay, and we discuss that quality's relationship with human cognitive processing.The material in this report will be most useful to researchers interested in the measurement of resistance/susceptibility to Truth Decay or in the impact of cognitive biases. We present detailed data and statistical results, highlighting key findings and insights in the summary at the beginning of the report and in the concluding chapter.This report is part of RAND's Countering Truth Decay initiative, which considers the diminishing role of facts and analysis in political and civil discourse and the policymaking process. The original report in the series, Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life by Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, was published in January 2018 and laid out a research agenda for studying and developing solutions to the Truth Decay challenge. FundingFunding for this research was provided by gifts from RAND supporters and income from operations. Research MethodsFor this work, we conducted a survey using the RAND ALP, which is a nationally representative panel that the RAND Corporation has used since 2006 to track individual attitudes toward a variety of political and other issues. Panel members are recruited to the ALP using probability-based sampling methods. Panel members agree to respond to regular online surveys, typically two to three per month. To ensure the representativeness of the panel, recruited individuals who did not previously have access to the internet were provided with a netbook computer and internet access. For this study, 1,333 panel members completed the survey, which was fielded from February 26 through March 13, 2019.To test our main hypothesis that resistance to Truth Decay is associated with more rigorous reasoning and less cognitive bias, we first assessed bivariate correlations between cognitive measures and the measures of resistance/susceptibility to Truth Decay. We then conducted three sets of regression analyses:• The first set predicts each of our proposed measures of resistance/ susceptibility to Truth Decay by using our measures of reasoning and bias, both without and while controlling for a variety of sociodemographic covariates.