Those who follow politics in any depth easily dismissed President Trump’s series of grave Twitter accusations on March 4 that Barack Obama ordered Trump Tower wiretapped before the 2016 election.
Trump offered no evidence for his wiretapping claims, but instead used inflammatory language, such as calling Obama “sick” and “bad.” Behavioral science suggests that despite Trump offering no substantive facts for his claim, the mainstream media’s current coverage will get him what he craves — unless it is reframed to help truth trump Trump’s evidence-free accusations.
Let’s consider some typical examples of how the accusations have been covered. CNN’s story described in the first sentence how “Trump made a stunning claim” about the wiretapping, and added that he did not offer any evidence. Next, the story featured 3 screenshots of Trump’s tweets, and a breakdown of the claims.
Following that, the article continued with rebuttals of Trump’s claims by Obama’s spokesperson, and then went into an analysis of how the tweets are representative of Trump’s wild accusations. The article on this topic by the Associated Press also started by describing Trump’s “startling allegation of abuse of power,” and noted that it was offered without evidence. The story continued with Obama’s denial of the claim, and then went into the details of Trump’s accusations, followed by a broader analysis.
These articles offered sophisticated political observers the appropriate context for Trump’s evidence-free accusations in the analytic part of each piece. Yet research on news consumption shows that most people don’t read the analysis. Only 41% of Americans go beyond simply skimming the headline, and, among these few, most only go into the first or second paragraph.
So what 6 in 10 who only read headlines get from the AP News is the headline: “Trump Accuses Obama of Tapping His Phones, Cites No Evidence.” What most of the rest who look at the first couple of paragraphs is a thorough description of Trump’s accusations.
Such engagement with the headline and the initial paragraphs will cause readers to experience “anchoring.” This well-established reasoning error results from how we process information we first encounter, which biases all the content we receive moving forward, even after we get more complete information.
What people will retain from such coverage will be a vague impression of Trump as unjustly wiretapped by the “bad” and “sick” Obama, a conclusion also supported by research on something called the availability heuristic. This fallacious thinking pattern causes us to focus on information with emotional overtones, regardless of whether it is factual.
These thinking errors will cause the majority of Americans to develop a mistaken impression of Trump’s wiretapping claims as legitimate, despite the lack of evidence. For instance, consider Trump’s evidence-free but often-repeated claim that millions of illegal ballots cost him the popular vote. Despite this allegation being rated false by fact-checkers, and criticized by fellow Republicans such as Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a Qualtrics poll showed that 29% of respondents believe that Trump won the popular vote.
Trump will keep making such claims with no evidence because he gets what he craves: millions believing his baseless allegations. Reframing the media coverage of Trump’s claims, using techniques informed by behavioral science, would disincentivize Trump from making such baseless statements, instead of rewarding him. Rather than focusing on relating the details of the specific claims made by Trump, news headlines and introductory paragraphs could foreground the pattern of our President systematically making accusations lacking evidence.
For instance, the AP could have run the headline “Trump Delivers Another Accusation Without Evidence, This Time Against Obama.” CNN could have introduced the story by focusing on Trump’s pattern of making wild allegations against his political opponents without any evidence. Then, deeper in the article where the shallow skimmers do not reach, the story could have detailed the allegations.
This style of media coverage would make Trump less inclined to make such claims, as he would not get what he wants.
You, the reader, can make a difference when media venues publicize Trump’s evidence-free accusations by writing letters to the editor encouraging them to reframe their reporting. By doing so, you will help castrate Trump’s accusations by creating appropriate incentives for all politicians — not just Trump — to make such claims only when they are supported by evidence.
Tsipursky is the author of the forthcoming “Pro-Truth Politics: Fighting Alternative Facts and Post-Truth Politics with Behavioral Science.” He researches decision-making and emotional and social intelligence in politics and business as a professor at Ohio State University.
