Disperceptions of the Ford/Kavanaugh Hearings (Part I)

The Kavanaugh nomination fight raised a recurring question in American politics: Who is lying?

Perhaps the first time Americans saw two people on television telling incompatible stories about a crucial political conflict was in the Alger Hiss/Whittaker Chambers controversy of the early days of the Cold War. Chambers claimed that Hiss was an active communist during his career in the State Department, including his participation in the Yalta Conference with the Soviet Union, while Hiss claimed that Chambers had manufactured the entire story. One of the men was clearly lying, but which one?

In 1991, the nomination fight over Clarence Thomas presented a similar situation: Was Anita Hill or Clarence Thomas lying about the accusations of sexual harassment? As in the Hiss/Chambers case, Americans divided and came to no consensus even decades later.

This phenomenon of persistent disputed perceptions—disperceptions—may be increasing in our culture, especially in regard to significant events. Social science often deals with misperceptions—errors in perception, for which we can identify the correct and incorrect sides—but less often recognizes disperceptions, or disputed perceptions for which we cannot sort out definitively the accurate and inaccurate perceptions grounded in the best available evidence. Disperceptions can linger over a long period of time without a consensus being reached, as has been the case for nearly 30 years following the Hill/Thomas hearings and will likely be the case for the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings as well.

The Kavanaugh accusations are not only the most recent of these three episodes of national-scale disperceptions but also the most psychologically complex.

In the Hiss/Chambers controversy, one of the men had to be lying. Chambers claimed that Hiss worked with him for several years as part of the Soviet spy apparatus in the United States; had let him stay in his apartment and given him a car; but most importantly had handed over thousands of pages of secret documents to be given to the Russians. There was no chance Chambers was mistaken or was thinking of someone else. If Chambers was lying, it was to frame Hiss; if Hiss was lying it was clearly to avoid exposure of his espionage. But the conclusion of one liar and one truth teller about the core issue at hand—was Hiss a communist spy?—was unavoidable.

In the Hill/Thomas case, one could also conclude that one of the two must have been lying and the other telling the truth (and have maintained the same positions for decades after while Thomas has been on the Supreme Court and Hill a professor at Brandeis). Anita Hill could have been lying about Thomas having sexually harassed her, or Thomas could have been lying in his denials.

However, there is more potential gray area than in the Cold War saga: some take the view that perhaps Hill misinterpreted or exaggerated the events in her mind, and hence believed what she was saying even though it may not have happened just that way. In this possible perception, both could be telling the truth as they remember it (Hill believes honestly that she was harassed even if she were not; Thomas believes honestly that he did not do it even though he did). In this way, we don’t necessarily have to believe there is a liar (though there very well may be).

In the Ford/Kavanaugh case, it is quite possible that Ford was telling the truth and Kavanaugh lying, or that Ford was lying and Kavanaugh telling the truth. But the gray area is quite large. Given the large gap in time (over 30 years) and the alcohol consumption of the night, perhaps Kavanaugh did not remember what he and his friend had done. Perhaps Ford was assaulted in the way she described, but by someone else those decades ago and mistakenly believes it to have been Kavanaugh. In either case, one of the two could be telling the accurate truth and the other the truth as they remember it (though it happens to be wrong). The problem is that both asserted in public, under oath, in a deeply important matter, that they were “100%” certain.

Some may be comfortable with the conclusion that one or the other of the core actors were lying, and we can dodge that belief by seeing one or both as merely being mistaken but not intentionally deceptive. This makes the truth of the situation more difficult to ascertain. If neither is lying, we have entered into a more problematic world, in which we recognize the prevalence of believed falsehoods. People are not lying, but instead deeply believing things that are false about their own history. On the other hand, they may be just old-fashioned liars.

The summer 2020 survey

In order to investigate perceptions of the Ford/Kavanaugh controversy, I commissioned a nationally representative survey of 1000 Americans, conducted 20-25 August 2020. (1)

Each respondent was given a brief introduction:

“When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to be a new Justice of the Supreme Court in 2018, he was accused of sexual assault by Christine Ford. She alleged that he assaulted her at a party when they were in high school; he strenuously denied the allegations. Please remember as much as you can about the Senate hearings that summer and the testimony of both Ford and Kavanaugh.”

My core interest is not only perceptions of what occurred, but perceptions of lying. Was Kavanaugh, or Ford, or both, or neither, perceived as being false? One of the first inquiries on the survey was an experiment. If Americans were asked about the two people, would it matter if they were asked who was telling the truth versus who was lying? Are people less willing to say that someone is lying than to say that someone is telling the truth?

Deception Essential Reads

The Liar Is in the Details: A New Way to Detect Deception

What Happens When You Keep Secrets?

Willingness to identify lying

All of the respondents were asked, “What do you believe really happened?” But half were given possible responses framed in terms of who was telling the truth, while the other half’s possible answers were framed in terms of who was lying.

Version A:

1. Ford was telling the accurate truth: the assault by Kavanaugh did take place

2. Both were telling the truth as they remember it (Ford believes Kavanaugh assaulted her, and Kavanaugh believes he did not)

3. Kavanaugh was telling the accurate truth: the assault did not take place

4. Do not have an opinion

Version B:

1. Ford was lying: she knows the incident did not in fact take place

2. Both were lying (Ford knows the incident did not happen; Kavanaugh was too drunk to remember what he did)

3. Kavanaugh was lying: he knows the assault did in fact take place

4. Do not have an opinion

Respondents were randomly assigned to one condition or the other (and the first three options within each condition were randomly mixed up as well), but the one thing that remained constant was the option to not offer an opinion. When asked who was telling the truth, 76% of Americans offered a view and 24% refused to give an opinion. But when asked who was lying, 29% said they did not have an opinion. The 5% difference is not large, but it may be meaningful. (2)

People seem to be somewhat hesitant to judge others to be lying. Unfortunately, that is the exact question that was on the table regarding both Ford and Kavanaugh.

Part 2 looks at the survey evidence on perceptions of truthfulness and lying, especially their connections to political beliefs.