Taking the Ingroup Seriously but the Outgroup Literally: Political Polarization and Flexible Standards of Honesty

Abstract: Political polarization intensifies when partisans selectively excuse falsehoods told by supported politicians while condemning similar falsehoods from opposed politicians. We propose that this partisan disagreement stems in part from differing beliefs about the broader messages—or gists—that falsehoods convey rather than mere factual ignorance. Across five preregistered studies (N = 2,412; k > 11,000), we find that when a supported (vs opposed) politician tells a falsehood, people believe the falsehood communicates a truer gist, believe the politician intended to convey that gist, and weigh the gist more strongly in their moral judgments. These effects emerged consistently among both conservative partisans (US Republicans, UK Conservatives) and liberal partisans (US Democrats, UK Labour). Beliefs about the gist not only mediated partisan disagreement about the morality of spreading falsehoods, but also predicted participants' intentions to "like" and "share" the falsehoods on social media. We discuss how understanding these shared psychological processes can inform interventions to reduce partisan conflict about political dishonesty.

Keywords: misinformation, dishonesty, political polarization