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Why do many voters still see politicians as honest, even when they spread lies?
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In a liberal democracy, the preferred conception of honesty is that of accuracy. Honesty means that a relationship exists between what a person says and what is happening in the world. An honest person’s opinions and beliefs are shaped by the external data and facts they take in.
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Honest people debate by reasoning informed by evidence. This makes politics transparent (because we can see the data that informs what politicians say), accountable, and leads to informed decision-making. Thus, a shared understanding of reality exists, which leads to social cohesion.
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Communication based on the 'accuracy' version of honesty is called ‘fact-speaking’.
It is seen by some as elitist, exclusive, oppressive, and wrong. Opponents of privileging fact-speaking find value in a different form of honesty called ‘belief-speaking’.
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Belief-speakers value a strong relation between what a person says and does. For them, authenticity and sincerity are the main ingredients of honesty. Accuracy in terms of data is less important. It’s speaking one’s mind that counts.
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In this view, it is not facts but experiences that are the basis of reasoning. Feelings, instincts, personal values, one’s gut, common sense, and intuition are seen as honest. Honest people are vitally important for speaking about currents that are not seen in the available data, exploring social challenges, and solving them.
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A productive democratic discourse needs both fact-speaking and belief-speaking. While belief-speaking ensures that debates feel relevant for many, fact-speaking provides data and evidence to settle political disputes and come to agreements.
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During the last decades fact-speaking is in decline among politicians while belief-speaking is on the rise, together with populism. The way the general public speaks has followed this trend, influenced by elites and politicians.
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Because of its focus on individual truths, belief-speaking increasingly detaches politics from the observable reality, and individuals from each other. Proponents of belief-speaking suppress reasoned and informed discourse and aim to divert, distract, and deflect rather than to persuade.
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The increase in belief-speaking is accompanied by democratic backsliding as a result of democratic norm violations by political elites. It opens the door for ignoring democratic traditions, power grabbing, and spreading misleading claims and false information, especially about political opponents.
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Belief-speaking is why many voters still see politicians as honest, even when they spread lies. In this mode of thinking it is not about accuracy, it is about authenticity and sincerity. It is about speaking one’s mind, especially by wronged outsiders against corrupted institutions of power.
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Literature
• Areyohun, S. et al. (2024) Computational analysis of US Congressional speeches reveals a shift from evidence to intuition. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2405.07323
• Carrella, F. Et al. (2023, December 3). The 'Truth Contagion' Effect in the US Political Online Debate. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qx34w
• Huttunen, K. J. A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2024, October 7). The evolution of truth in political discourse from fact to feeling and its implications for democracy. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/k4p29
• Lasser, J. Et al. (2023) From alternative conceptions of honesty to alternative facts in communications by US politicians. Nat Hum Behav 7, 2140–2151 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01691-w
• Lewandowsky, S. (2021) Willful Construction of Ignorance: A Tale of Two Ontologies. Deliberate ignorance, chapter 7.
• Lewandowsky, S. (2024) When liars are considered honest. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 28, Issue 5, 383 – 385.
