A new article co-authored by CCPP Director Erik C. Nisbet, along with R. Kelly Garrett and Robert Bond of The Ohio State University, has been published in the journal Political Communication. The study, titled “Self-Reported Exposure and Beliefs About Misinformation Across a U.S. Presidential Election Cycle: Expressive Responding and Motivated Reasoning,” investigates how Americans report their exposure to, and belief in, false political claims across an election season.
Using a unique eight-wave panel survey conducted during and after the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the authors tested whether partisans’ claims of exposure to or belief in misinformation were sincere or simply “partisan cheerleading.” To do this, they created pairs of “decoy falsehoods”—fabricated but plausible statements critical of either Democrats or Republicans—and tracked how belief in these claims changed over time.
The findings reveal that expressive responding is relatively rare: most Americans did not claim to have seen or believed politically convenient falsehoods entirely fabricated by researchers. However, partisan bias increased as Election Day approached, suggesting that the heightened salience of politics temporarily amplified motivated reasoning. After the election, belief and exposure rates quickly returned to lower, more balanced levels.
Overall, the study challenges assumptions that widespread misinformation beliefs during elections are largely insincere, showing instead that most Americans’ political beliefs—even when inaccurate—tend to be genuine rather than performative.
The article adds important nuance to the ongoing debate about misinformation and political psychology, with implications for how scholars interpret self-reported beliefs in survey research.