On June 27, the very first debate by the U.S. presidential candidates happened in Atlanta. Prior to this event, the current US President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump had already made domestic claims, mainly on the economy, immigration, and abortion.
Analyzing Trump's and Biden's Claims
Trump touted America as having had the greatest economy in history under his leadership, saying that no country had ever done so well. But little does he know that economists are cognizant of the fact that the health of a country's economy has to be measured with respect to its gross domestic product. The growth after inflation during his reign was 2.67% in comparison to an annual GDP growth of 3.4% under Biden.
Trump stated false claims when he got down to the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate in the country was 6.3% at the end of his term, while under-Biden, it had been 4%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Another misleading claim he made was that under him, America had become energy independent, whereas this was no longer the situation under Biden. To debunk this, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates that, in reality, more energy has been exported under the current administration and more energy produced than consumed.
Meanwhile, Biden told his listeners that no U.S. president this decade has had people dying in military missions around the world. The data shows at least 16 U.S. service members have already died while serving overseas under his watch.
Biden also claimed that 40% fewer people are crossing the U.S. border illegally compared to when Trump was in charge. This statement is partially true, as daily illegal border crossings had averaged 2,000 in the past week, a 47% drop from a month ago when it was around 3,800 per day.
On the other hand, Biden claimed that Trump wants to abolish Social Security, but Trump actually referred to "cutting waste and fraud," not Social Security entitlements. Actually, Trump made a post that he will not, by any circumstance, allow Social Security to be even touched if he becomes the president.
Psychology of Fact-Checking and How It Could Be Effective in Addressing Misinformation
The amount of misinformation spreading gets more and more every day, hence posing a great threat to our society. For this reason, there are human assessors who are tasked to correctly identify, assess, or revise the truthfulness of information.
It can be virtually applied to warrant the truth in some statements or claims. For example, it can guarantee that a valid media is developed based on evidence and requires trustworthy sources. These sources, either primary or secondary, need to be checked for forms of error, unconscious bias, or outdated information.
Fact-checking activity is, however, open to systematic error arising due to the limitation of human cognition. Cognitive biases are one of such errors and occur quite frequently and at very critical levels.
A research team recently described 39 cognitive biases that manifest during the fact-checking process, then presented corresponding countermeasures that can be put in place to limit their effects.
On a global scale, misinformation poses threats to elections, state-sponsored violence, and health. In a 2021 study, a group of researchers conducted an experiment across four countries to investigate the extent to which fact-checking can actually decrease false beliefs.
In a team led by Ethan Porter, using a meta-analytic procedure in the evaluation of 22 fact-checks, evidence from research shows that fact-checking could be an important weapon against misinformation.
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