People who have the least knowledge about politics think they know so much about politics

A recent study conducted in the U.S by the Political Psychology journal has shown that people who know less about politics are very confident about their political knowledge. According to Professor Ian Ardon of the University of Maryland: “people with the least knowledge about a topic will be paradoxically very confident that they know everything about that topic. More to that, the person who is actually knowledgeable about the topic will also discount their knowledgeability,”

During the study professor, Anson examined 2,606 adult Americans in 2016 about their political knowledge. The questions were simple but most of the participants performed very poorly. The lecturer asked questions like the name of the current Secretary of Energy, the number of years served by different Senators, the political party controlling the House of Representatives, and finally the four programs the U.S federal government has been spending the least on.

Among the asked questions those who performed the least are those who were most confident about their political knowledge. Professor Anson explained that: “There are many Americans who are overconfident about their knowledge in Politics because their knowledge about the world politics has not been tested for them to know actually how little they know.”

The research showed that most of the Americans engage in Partisan politics where the main arguing points are based on either the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. This meant that the partisan people think that they are more knowledgeable than the non-partisans. When partisans were asked to grade political knowledge questions filled by fictional members from other parties there was a lot of bias, especially from the low-skilled respondents. They did not consider facts, but their grading was based on bias and how they feel about that other political party.

The biases among partisans prove that there is a widespread failure of political disclosure in the U.S. because people from different parties tend to misjudge political knowledgeability of the people from the opposing parties.