Effectiveness of The Big Lie

Science has now helped to explain why the big lie is effective.

Specifically, sociologists from four major research institutions investigated why so many Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, years after it became obvious that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.

The researchers found, as described in an article in the journal Sociological Inquiry (and re-printed by Newsweek):

* Many Americans felt an urgent need to seek justification for a war already in progress

* Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe.

* “For the most part people completely ignore contrary information.”

* “The study demonstrates voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information”

* People get deeply attached to their beliefs, and form emotional attachments that get wrapped up in their personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter.

* “We refer to this as ‘inferred justification, because for these voters, the sheer fact that we were engaged in war led to a post-hoc search for a justification for that war.

* “People were basically making up justifications for the fact that we were at war”

* “They wanted to believe in the link [between 9/11 and Iraq] because it helped them make sense of a current reality. So voters’ ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information, whether we think that is good or bad for democratic practice, does at least demonstrate an impressive form of creativity.

As the study notes, this tendency of many people to make up false stories to explain why we went to war and then to hold on to such false beliefs in the face of contrary evidence is “a serious challenge to democratic theory and practice”. Until people learn to think more clearly and rationally, they are easily manipulated.

All a government has to do is tell a big enough lie, and many people will swallow it hook, line and sinker. Or the government can just do something big – like starting a war for no good reason (or giving trillions in bailouts to the wealthiest corporations instead of the “little people” who most need it?) – and many people will struggle mightily to themselves concoct false justifications for doing so.