A study shows what should not come as a surprise:
People suck at differentiating between factual statements and opinion statements. (Note that "factual statements" can include statements that are false. "2 + 2 = 5" would be considered a factual statement by the terms used in the study.) Overall, people do barely better than random chance at distinguishing between the two, and less than a quarter were able to correctly categorize all 10 statements they were given. (There were 2 additional "borderline" statements that the researchers considered to be too difficult to categorize, because they contained a mix of speculation and facts that cannot be easily verified.)
People tend to think things they agree with are factual, and things they disagree with are opinions (This applies to both Democrats and Republicans). And, in case you were wondering, the study made it pretty clear that facts could be "accurate" or "inaccurate":
After classifying each statement as factual or opinion, respondents were then asked one of two follow-up questions. If they classified a statement as factual, they were then asked if they thought the statement was accurate or inaccurate. If they classified it as an opinion, they were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement.
When opinion statements were incorrectly identified as factual, 83 - 91% of the respondents said that they thought it was an accurate fact. Factual statements that were incorrectly labeled as opinion had a lot more variation, with 48 - 82% disagreeing with the statement.
More interesting, when a statement was attributed to a news source, it generally had no effect on people's ability to distinguish it as a factual statement. About 74% of people correctly identified a factual statement when it was unattributed, or was attributed to either the New York Times or USA Today. However, the big exception to this is when attributed to Fox News Republicans called it factual 77% of the time, while Democrats called it factual only 66% of the time. Just saying something was from Fox News changed people's ability to objectively judge the statement.
The "duh!" parts of the report:
- People who describe themselves as digitally savvy were better at correctly classifying the statements.
- People who reported having a high trust in news outlets were better at correctly classifying the statements.
But while people who reported greater interest in news were better at identifying factual statements, they were not any better in regards to opinions.
The
:
- 41% of those surveyed thought "Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. Federal Budget" is a statement of opinion. I'm sure that, even after explanation, some people were confused by
this being a blatant falsehood something, but it's still not a statement of opinion; it can be proven true or false.
- Of the 57% who correctly identified it as a factual statement
a whopping 62% thought it was accurate.
- 29% of those surveyed thought "Democracy is the greatest form of government" is a factual statement.