The Echo-Chamber Effect

Nicholas DiFonzo is a professor of psychology at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is co-author of "Rumor Psychology," and author of "The Watercooler Effect."

Updated April 22, 2011, 3:56 PM

Why don’t people believe the facts that clearly refute the “birther” rumor? To many, this resistance to refutation seems incomprehensible. How could this be?

Americans across the political spectrum distrust the news media more than their own social group.

The answer lies in the increasingly disconnected ideological echo chambers that are distrustful of one another, and of official information sources.

People exist in like-minded social cliques, clans, or clubs. Take the Internet: conservative political blogs tend overwhelmingly to link with other conservative political blogs; liberal blogs to other liberal blogs. This polarization makes for fertile soil for rumors.

In my research, when Republicans and Democrats were put in separate groups and each group was asked to discuss a derogatory rumor about the other party (e.g., “Republicans are uneducated;” “Democrats give less to charity”) beliefs in these rumors polarized in predictable directions. When the discussion groups were mixed, this did not happen.

Among like-minded people, it’s hard to come up with arguments that challenge the group consensus, which means group members keep hearing arguments only in one direction. When we hear a rumor denigrating someone in the opposing political party, we are far more likely to send it to friends — typically members of our own party -- whom we think would enjoy hearing that rumor. Yet most people are far less likely to challenge false rumors about the opposing party, because that might be considered a social faux pas among their friends.

In addition, most people tend to get “evidence” to substantiate rumors from friends or sources of information that they trust. The fact is, Americans across the political spectrum tend to trust the news media (and "facts" provided by the media) less than their own social group. So in the liberal blogosphere, it’s false rumors about Sarah Palin that enjoy wide circulation.