Risk, Relief, Demotivate: Fact Correcting Statistics to Influence Policy Support

• In Event: Countering Misinformation through Fact Checking

Abstract

Stories of sensational crimes saturate the news media, painting a scary picture of the outside world (Bock, 2021; Garcia & Arkerson, 2017; McGregor, 2017; Tabor, 2022). As decades of media studies scholars have demonstrated, people perceive the world to be a more dangerous place than real crime statistics indicate, based on influences from repeated exposure to crime-depicting media (Gerbner et al., 1980; Gerbner & Gross, 1976; Heath & Petraitis, 1987). The reality, however, is that crime is falling in the United States. Statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) indicate drastic multi-decade declines in property and violent crime rates and victimizations (Gramlich, 2020; Morgan & Truman, 2020). Yet 78% of Americans believe that crime is rising nationally, and 38% believe crime is rising locally (Gramlich, 2020). Perceptions of rising crime and a loss of faith in governmental ability to address the injurious effects of crime keep public sentiment directed towards tough-on-crime policies (Dolliver et al., 2022). Policymakers have latched on to the disconnect between perceived risk and real crime statistics, encouraging support for punitive measures based on these skewed misperceptions (Enns, 2014).

The present study bridges political communication, health psychology, and criminology to test relationships between the perceived risk of victimization and support for tough-on-crime policies, with estimation relief as a possible tool for demotivating support. Estimation relief refers to the feeling people get when they learn they are not at as high of a risk for a negative outcome as they may have initially thought (Fagerlin et al., 2005). Similar to this concept, research on fact-checking has consistently demonstrated that correcting misinformation leads to improved accuracy in beliefs, though this is sometimes subject to motivated reasoning biases (Carnahan & Bergan, 2022; Walter et al., 2020). What differentiates estimation relief from fact-checking, though, is the manipulation of affect such that estimation relief fosters specific feelings towards the content; in other words, by triggering feelings of relief, people are anticipated to feel better about crime (i.e., less fearful) and will thus be less supportive of tough-on-crime policies.

Through a between-subjects 2x2 experimental design, with four conditions and 298 participants from across the United States, feelings of relief are manipulated through estimation tasks and graphical depictions of falling crime rates. This study thus puts forth a model where prosocial policymaking is encouraged by expressly discouraging support for tough-on-crime policies. As such, the present study contributes to the literature on psychological processing, public opinions on crime, and demotivation. Ultimately, this study asks: How does estimation relief affect perceptions of crime risk, and what does this do to motivate behavior?

Author

• Courtney Darian Tabor, Vrije Universiteit Brussel