Liberal Forum

And here I thought it was just because they were dumbasses.

The deadly reason Republicans are suckers for fake news (msn.com)

Multiple recent studies show that Republicans are as much as 8.5 times more likely to both believe and share fake or false “news” with others than are Democrats. The phenomenon is obvious, actually: while as many as half of Republicans believe the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, there’s no similarly disprovable “big lie” embraced by Democrats. And it’s not limited to things like elections that are overtly political: Republicans were more likely than Democrats to reject basic science about COVID, and thus die of the disease at much higher rates than Democrats. Even when their lives and their families’ lives are at stake, Republicans let themselves be suckered into believing things that are easily proven false. It’s gotten so bad that Republicans are more than 400% more likely to be banned from Twitter than Democrats.
Why is this? It turns out there are several reasons. First, conservatives are more vulnerable to listening to and believing people who present themselves as authority figures. They need a father figure. Father will protect and take care of you. Putting your trust in authoritarian figures diminishes the complexity of life: there’s less to have to know or worry about if you believe that “father” has it all under control. Hence their higher rate of belief in a God. But it also makes conservatives more vulnerable to believing any old thing that “father” tells them. Second, there’s more conservative misinformation out there than there is liberal misinformation. Thus, conservatives are more likely to be exposed to it and to share it. To a large extent, this flows from the conservative worldview being more adolescent, narcissistic and “me-centered,” with the myth of the “rugged individual” at its center. The conservative worldview putting, as it does, the “freedom of the individual” above the “welfare of society,” is much more vulnerable to corporate-funded pitches that work to increase profits. The core message of most advertising is, after all, “You are the most important person in the world and you want this product. ”And make no mistake about it: a lot of what passes as news and commentary is actually advertising for the idea that corporations and billionaires should be able to do whatever they want. “Low taxes, reduced regulations, smaller government”: it’s a sales pitch.
While Republicans have always been vulnerable to this sort of psychological manipulation, we had guardrails in place to protect the public from being swamped by it. When Reagan took down the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, Congress passed bipartisan legislation putting it back into effect: Reagan vetoed it.