One of the reasons I'm looking into lying as a sociological force is because we know so little about how dishonesty as a political tactic applies to political liberalism. I sat in on a session with Drew Westen yesterday, an expert who talked about networks in the brain and how they make connections, and I asked him about how comedy changes neural pathways. His answer was that he didn't know since there was not a lot of data on humor. That is stunning, as comedy is a pervasive cultural tool that obviously has strong evolutionary consequences, and intersects deeply with dishonesty. In fact one of the key element that makes something funny is hypocrisy, which is why the Daily Show was at its best during the Iraq War, why the WGA's videos have been so amazingly successful, and why Colbert's White House correspondent's dinner was stunningly powerful.
Much work on political persuasion maintains that people are influenced by information that they believe and not by information that they don't. By this view, false beliefs have no power if they are known to be false. This helps to explain frequent efforts to change voters' attitudes by exposing them to relevant facts. But findings from social psychology suggest that this view requires modification: sometimes, false beliefs influence people's attitudes even after they are understood to be false. In a trio of experiments, I demonstrate that the effect is present in people's thinking about politics and amplified by party identification. I conclude by elaborating the consequences for theories of belief updating and strategic political communication.
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