Political Ideology and Accuracy of Information

Abstract

Understanding our nation’s government and the politics involved is essential, but political issues are sometimes considered too sensitive to discuss in educational settings. Without classroom-based discussions, how accurate are students in judging the accuracy of political statements, especially in in today’s “fake news” climate? To generate a possible answer to this question, we examined students’ accuracy in judging political claims regarding events occurring in President Trump’s first year in office, as well as the relationship between political ideology and accuracy of non-political judgements. Results showed that a higher percentage of students in a southeastern state university identified themselves as liberals than was the case in our past research with students at this particular university. The principal finding of the study we report in this article was that conservative students were less accurate in judging false political statements than were liberal and independent students. Political ideology was not related to the accuracy of academic judgments. Both critical thinking scores and political ideology predicted accuracy in judging false political statements.