Bullshit receptivity - Sweden edition

The Complex Relation Between Receptivity to Pseudo-Profound Bullshit and Political Ideology

We are frequently exposed to fake news, conspiracy theories, ideologically biased narratives and “alternative facts” and pseudo-profound bullshit.

In sum, the studies conducted so far do indicate that there is an ideological asymmetry in terms of bullshit susceptibility that covers both general and economic ideology. But they suffer from several limitations. We turn to these limitations next and explain how we addressed them in the current study.

The paper concentrates its research on Sweden.

In general, the results corroborate the notion that the degree to which people are receptive to bullshit is a meaningful and robust aspect of their cognitive style. Bullshit receptivity was, consistent with past research, negatively associated with numeracy and cognitive reflection, and positively associated with confirmation bias for both neutral and political information. The results did, furthermore, generally hold up when we controlled for the perceived profundity of genuine aphorisms. This shows that bullshit receptivity is not just the tendency to perceive any kind of statement as meaningful. Rather, bullshit receptivity appears to be associated with a failure to detect bullshit and distinguish it from genuine profundity (i.e., a lack of bullshit sensitivity) for the most part, although some bullshit sensitive persons (e.g., those with strong individualizing moral intuitions) appear to combine high profoundness receptivity with average levels of bullshit receptivity.

You probably have a hunch where this will lead to and you might be on the right track. To cut it short here is the

Summary of the Findings

In sum, the current study revealed a complex picture of the relationship between bullshit receptivity and political ideology. Bullshit receptivity was clearly associated with social conservatism, and particularly with moral intuitions pertaining to ingroup loyalty, respect for authority, and purity, but it was associated with centrism or even leftism (when controlling for other aspects of ideology) in the economic domain, and it was highest of all among voters who supported a small green party on the left.

This pattern of results cannot be fully explained by any of the aforementioned accounts of the congruence of ideology and cognition. The existence of both left- and right-wing bullshit receptivity does not necessarily imply that the relation between bullshit receptivity and ideology is symmetrical, nor is this what the present results suggest. On the contrary, bullshit receptivity might emerge only in specific kinds of left and right ideological thought. It may, furthermore, be driven by somewhat different processes in different ideologies—on the left, it may stem from an uncritical openness to ideas that sound ideologically appealing or familiar; on the right, it may stem from a disinclination to critically engage with information and its sources (rather than a need for certainty and security per se).

Highly recommended paper, makes for good entertainment as well. Related reading of course 'On Bullshit' by Harry Frankfurt.

The Sweden Democrats, a radical-right populist party in Sweden, and its recent success

Economic Losers and Political Winners: Sweden’s Radical Right

Ernesto Dal Bó, Frederico Finan, Olle Folke, Torsten Persson, and Johanna Rickne

Abstract

We study the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a radical-right party that rose from negligible size in 2002 to Sweden’s third largest party in 2014. We use comprehensive data to study both its politicians (supply side) and voters (demand side). All political candidates for the party can be identi…ed in register data, which also lets us aggregate individual social and economic conditions in municipalities or voting districts and relate them to the party’s vote share. We take a starting point in two key economic events: (i) a series of policy reforms in 2006-2011 that signi…cantly widened the disposable- income gap between “insiders”and “outsiders”in the labor market, and (ii) the …nancial-crisis recession that doubled the job-loss risk for “vulnerable”vs “secure”insiders. On the supply side, the Sweden Democrats over-represent both losing groups relative to the population, whereas all other parties under-represent them, results which also hold when we disaggregate across time, subgroups, and municipalities. On the demand side, the local increase in the insider-outsider income gap, as well as the share of vulnerable insiders, are systematically associated with larger electoral gains for the Sweden Democrats. These …ndings can be given a citizen-candidate interpretation: economic losers (as we demonstrate) decrease their trust in established parties and institutions. As a result, some economic losers became Sweden-Democrat candidates, and many more supported the party electorally to obtain greater descriptive representation. This way, Swedish politics became potentially more inclusive. But the politicians elected for the Sweden Democrats score lower on expertise, moral values, and social trust –as do their voters which made local political selection less valence oriented.


Final Remarks

We study the Sweden Democrats, a radical-right populist party in Sweden, and its recent success. On the demand side of politics, we mostly expand earlier research on how occupations and job losses may help shape populist votes (Rydgren and Arzheimer 2018, Autor, et al. 2016, Dehdari 2018), by identifying groups of losers from two main economic events during the period when the electoral support for the Sweden Democrats expanded. Our most novel result here is that the local consequences of an important set of national policy reforms are a main correlate of local populist votes. We also show that the rise of the Sweden Democrats took place as the trust of voters in government diverged depending on their economic status. More importantly, our paper is the …rst to systematically analyze the supply side of a major
populist party, using individual-level data for the locally elected representatives of the growing Sweden Democrats. We exploit the same subgroup disaggregation as in the demand-side analysis and show that the Sweden Democrats over-represent the losing groups, while other parties under-represent them. Together, these …ndings rhyme with what we have called a citizen-candidate interpretation,
namely that the disgruntled groups not only support the Sweden Democrats electorally, but also join their ranks as members and run as political candidates. Our interpretation is that in the wake of economic grievances and diminished trust, political platforms lose credibility. And in the spirit of citizen-candidate models, proposals are credible when entering candidates share socioeconomic traits with voters, and thus appear committed to representing them faithfully. In sum, the economic shocks and the trust de…cit create both a supply and a demand for descriptive representation. We have also seen that elected local Sweden-Democrat politicians differ from local politicians of other parties in a number of other dimensions. In particular, they score lower on a number of personal traits and attitudes that many would consider valence variables in politics. In one sense, the Sweden Democrats thus appear to ful…ll a traditional role of new parties in democracies, namely to provide representation to some previously under-represented groups (at the same time, they offer less representation to other social groups, like women and non-OECD immigrants). In another sense, the new populist party appears to threaten the positive selection on ability in Sweden’s local democracy that we have recently documented elsewhere (Dal Bó et al. 2017).