People with the least political knowledge tend to be the most overconfident in their grasp of facts

New research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied suggests that people often overestimate their understanding of political facts. This tendency to be overconfident appears most common among individuals who actually know the least about politics and those who lean conservative. The findings provide evidence that psychological traits, like a desire for quick and definitive answers, help explain why some voters struggle to accurately judge their own political knowledge.

Erika K. Fulton, an associate professor of psychology at Idaho State University and head of the META Lab, led a team of scientists to investigate how well people gauge their own grasp of political information. The research team noticed a gap in the existing scientific literature regarding this specific type of self-evaluation. Most prior studies on political knowledge were conducted by political scientists, who often use different analytical methods than cognitive psychologists.

The scientists wanted to apply the strict measurement standards of cognitive psychology to political knowledge. As the researchers explained, “Metacognition is broadly defined as thinking about one’s own cognition. The type we studied is called metacognitive monitoring accuracy, or the degree to which judgments of what one knows matches what one actually knows.”

In simpler terms, this concept refers to a person’s ability to accurately recognize when they are right and when they are wrong. “People tend to be overconfident regarding what they think they know, and this has serious consequences in the political realm, such as when people vote on candidates and issues that they don’t understand as well as they think they do,” the researchers stated.

“We couldn’t find any political metacognition studies conducted by cognitive psychologists, specifically metacognition researchers, only by political scientists,” the researchers told PsyPost. “Experimental psychology has very specific measurement criteria that guide our study designs, and we wanted to employ those for a fuller, more nuanced understanding of political metacognition.”

To explore this topic, the scientists recruited 216 participants through an online platform called Amazon Mechanical Turk between February 2021 and March 2022. The sample consisted of adults living in the United States.

To evaluate political awareness, the participants took a test of 60 questions covering basic political figures, government rules, and policy issues. The test was designed to be balanced, containing an equal number of questions that might favor liberal or conservative viewpoints. It also included 20 general knowledge questions to serve as a point of comparison.

The researchers measured confidence at two different points during the testing process. First, participants were asked to estimate how well they would do on the test before they took it. Then, after answering the multiple-choice questions, they rated their confidence in each specific answer they had just selected.

The scientists also used an objective questionnaire to measure the participants’ political orientation based on their agreement with specific policies, rather than just asking them to label themselves. Additionally, the scientists measured the participants’ cognitive style, specifically looking at their need for cognitive closure. This term refers to a psychological preference for reaching a quick, definite decision rather than dealing with ambiguity or uncertainty.

A person with a high need for cognitive closure generally prefers a clear “yes” or “no” answer and dislikes gray areas. By collecting all this information, the researchers could look at how political beliefs and thinking habits relate to self-awareness.

The researchers observed that the participants were generally overconfident in their test performance. The gap between what people thought they knew and what they actually knew was widest among those with the lowest test scores.

“We found that people are generally overconfident in their political knowledge, especially those who truly don’t know much about politics (the classic Dunning-Kruger effect),” the researchers detailed. The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias where people with limited knowledge in a specific area greatly overestimate their own competence, often because they lack the expertise needed to recognize their own mistakes.

The data also revealed a connection between political leanings, thinking styles, and this overconfidence. “Those who were more politically conservative and who like to make quick, definitive decisions, even if they may not have all the relevant information, tend to be the most overconfident,” the researchers observed.

To explain this, the scientists point to the mental shortcuts, or cues, that people use to judge their own memory. “Our analyses suggest that these individuals may be using the wrong cues to decide whether they know something or not,” the researchers stated. For instance, someone might mistakenly rely on a strong political identity as a cue that they know a specific political fact, rather than actually retrieving the correct information from memory.

Even though the average participant displayed overconfidence, the data presented a complex picture. “On average, people showed small to moderate overconfidence in their political knowledge,” the researchers explained. “However, the largest group of participants was underconfident or well-calibrated, suggesting that only a subset of the population may need to improve their political metacognition.” Being well-calibrated means a person’s confidence level perfectly matches their actual accuracy.

The researchers caution against generalizing too broadly from this single investigation. “Keep in mind that this is just one study and it needs to be replicated and extended in order to draw strong conclusions,” the researchers added.

The analysis also brought a couple of unexpected trends to light. “We were surprised that political metacognition was better than general knowledge metacognition, and that underconfidence was most prevalent among political moderates,” the researchers noted. “The first was reassuring but the latter suggests that political moderates may be insufficiently engaged and/or vocal in the political realm.”

The scientists emphasized that their goal is not to criticize any specific group of voters. “We do not at all intend to shame or pass judgment on anyone, it isn’t easy to be metacognitively accurate and there are lots of factors that can bias us,” the researchers said.

They also pointed out that the findings do not apply universally to all conservatives. “It’s also not an anti-conservative paper; we emphasize that at high levels of political knowledge, liberals and conservatives had very similar political metacognitive accuracy,” the researchers stated.

In fact, the data suggests that actual familiarity with a topic overrides political biases. As the researchers put it, “political metacognitive accuracy was better predicted by political knowledge than political orientation, meaning that what one knows is more important than whether one leans liberal or conservative.”

“We also want to emphasize that when we say ‘political knowledge’ we mean verifiable political facts, like who the speaker of the house is or how many votes are needed to pass a bill,” the researchers clarified. “So, we were not presenting highly emotional or biased information for our participants to judge, and thus our results might not replicate in more politicized contexts.”

Because the participants were mostly White, male, and lower-to-middle income, the scientists caution that the findings might not apply to the entire American population. The researchers are already planning to expand this line of inquiry to address these variables and explore new contexts.

“We already have another paper under review, specifically about metacognitive accuracy of misinformation detection, and we are writing a third paper based on a study that combines aspects of our metacognition of political facts study with this metacognition of misinformation study,” the researchers told PsyPost.

“A fourth study is currently in its design phase and explores the degree to which people are truly unaware of their level of political knowledge or if they might admit more uncertainty in the right context,” the researchers noted. “Ultimately, we are looking to focus on interventions that address metacognitive shortcomings regarding political information that could help some if not all of us.”

The scientists acknowledge that political science has laid a strong foundation for this topic. “Some of our results are certainly consistent with what political scientists have uncovered and we are grateful for their work on this topic both for society and for how it helped inform our study designs,” the researchers observed.

“That said, we think we have drawn attention to the ability to uncover a more nuanced picture of political metacognition through certain measurement and analytical choices,” the researchers added.

“We encourage everyone to educate themselves on politics, and to vote both in national and local elections,” the researchers concluded. “Being active at the local level, in particular, can bring about tangible, positive impacts in your communities.”

The study, “Metacognitive Monitoring of Political Facts: Effects of Political Orientation, Knowledge, and Cognitive Style,” was authored by Erika K. Fulton, Alicyn E. Ager, Erin Madison, and Jeremy Russell.