Why McCain Lies? Why McCain Ties?

There are two questions that have been raised countless times lately:

1. Why do John McCain and Sarah Palin keep telling lies, even as they keep getting called on them?
   
   
2. Why isn't Barack Obama running away with the race?

A depressing WaPo article helps explain a lot of what's going on.

You probably have heard of the phenomenon that people tend to cling to the first version of a story they've been told, even if they're later informed that it's not true. You probably have also heard that refuting the first version will do nothing but make some people believe the first version more. The article describes several experiments which strongly demonstrate this.

The worst part about it? While the effect is statistically present in all groups, it far more pronounced in conservatives than it is in liberals.

Excerpt:

Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation -- the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.

A similar "backfire effect" also influenced conservatives told about Bush administration assertions that tax cuts increase federal revenue. One group was offered a refutation by prominent economists that included current and former Bush administration officials. About 35 percent of conservatives told about the Bush claim believed it; 67 percent of those provided with both assertion and refutation believed that tax cuts increase revenue.

In a paper approaching publication, Nyhan, a PhD student at Duke University, and Reifler, at Georgia State University, suggest that Republicans might be especially prone to the backfire effect because conservatives may have more rigid views than liberals: Upon hearing a refutation, conservatives might "argue back" against the refutation in their minds, thereby strengthening their belief in the misinformation. Nyhan and Reifler did not see the same "backfire effect" when liberals were given misinformation and a refutation about the Bush administration's stance on stem cell research.

Sheesh. What the hell are we supposed to do now?

I guess the next thing to do is run a study to find out what happens when multiple refutations are supplied. That is, if a group shows an increased belief in a given falsehood after hearing it once, what will happen if they're told several times, perhaps in several ways, that it's really, really, really not true?

The only other thing I can think of is to hope that true conservatives are a distinct minority. The article doesn't say how people were labeled, but I do know one thing: Many more people embrace liberal principles and policy goals than will call themselves liberals.

(h/t: Tim F./Balloon Juice)