The Danger of Denying Reality

Research that started in political science and now explored across the social sciences has argued that people deny the reality of a situation not because they don’t perceive the reality, but because they wish to express affiliation for an alternate, false reality. In other words, some people affirm statements that they know do not represent reality because they want to let the world know what they stand for.

Source: Schaffner and Luks, 2018

The investigations that launched this line of inquiry found that people reported a larger crowd size at Donald Trump’s inauguration than at Obama’s, even when presented with unambiguous photographic evidence to the contrary. Studies of the inauguration photos both immediately after Trump's inauguration by Schaffner and Luks (2018) and in a recent replication by Ross and Levy (2023) found that upwards of one of every nine "strong" Trump supporters reported a larger crowd size in Trump's inauguration photo when presented his and Obama's side by side.

"Expressive Responding" and Fascism

This phenomenon has come to be called "expressive responding." But this label is problematic. The issue is not that the term cloaks reality denial in anodyne jargon. It's that obviously false beliefs, which are detrimental to our social fabric, are characterized as a kind of clever hack of objective science, and therefore something rational.

By calling these responses "expressive," they appear almost virtuous, since our culture values expressing how you really feel.

Why not call the 1-in-9 group "reality deniers" or "irrational responders"? These terms more accurately describe the phenomenon. In Umberto Eco's influential 1995 essay Ur-Fascism, irrationality and the willful denial of unambiguous reality are defined as the heart of all fascist ideology. At the risk of sowing political division, could we not also say the reality deniers in this study were "wearing fascist goggles"?

In the post-war era, after the defeat of fascist Nazi Germany, social scientists may have concluded that reality denial is a problem that should be ameliorated through a public education campaign. Scientists of the time might also have stigmatized reality deniers as mentally deficient, an inaccurate and harmful characterization we'd seek to avoid today.

Reality Denial and Cognitive Ability

It should be noted that responses were classified as "expressive" by the researchers and not the respondents themselves. None of the researchers in the above-cited studies directly observed a participant claiming something like: "I realize that Trump's crowd size was smaller but I am just expressing myself."

Both studies tested whether education or intelligence could predict reality denial. Schaffner and Luks (2018) asked each study participant to define their education level. They found that 28% of strong Trump supporters who defined themselves as highly educated believed Trump's inauguration crowd size was larger. Of those strong Trump supporters who defined themselves as having "low education," only 10% believed his crowd size to be larger.

However, the pattern of results found by Schaffner and Luks (2018) failed to replicate in the Ross and Levy study (2023), which repeated the education level self-report. Ross and Levy (2023) also added logic testing for participants. They found that performance on logic puzzles (so-called "bat-and-ball" problems) was not correlated with reality denial.

Reality deniers may not be unintelligent, but they are irrational. And this is what makes the "expressive responding" label dangerous. As another student of fascism, Yale historian Timothy Snyder has argued that the path to fascism runs straight through reality denial. This is also seen in the Oscar-winning film Zone of Interest, which chronicles the day-to-day life of a Nazi death camp commandant and his family, who live adjacent to the camp. The characters are aware that the Nazi concentration camps are in fact death camps. But, by living life as normal, they reaffirm the lie that daily atrocious acts against humanity aren't happening, despite unambiguous evidence from next door. Without this irrationality, the evil they committed would have been impossible.

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Are Reality Deniers Just Expressing Themselves?

What it comes down to is whether researchers truly believe that the participants are trying to express themselves in full knowledge of their factual incorrectness. It is entirely possible that reality deniers believe what they are expressing. In the end, we can never know why people behave as they do—our inner motivations blur into our beliefs, which blur further into our expressed opinions. It's not a scientific question.

There is nothing inherently wrong with believing in things that aren't supported by scientific evidence. Religious beliefs, for example, are clearly demarcated as such: they can be held at the same time as rational political beliefs. But people who deny reality to make a political point, even at the risk of being labeled "irrational," can be a threat to societal cohesion. The democratic political system on which societal cohesion relies becomes untenable when substantial numbers of people deny plain facts under the guise of "expression."

At the very least, social scientists should avoid the term "expressive responding," which portrays these attitudes as something rational and innocuous, when they are neither.

Copyright © 2024 Daniel Graham. Special thanks to RJ.