Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies
Abstract Recent evidence shows that US politicians’ conception of honesty has undergone a bifurcation, with authentic but evidence-free “belief-speaking” becoming more prominent and differentiated from evidence-based “fact-speaking”. Here we examine the downstream consequences of those two ways of c...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Nature Portfolio
2025-02-01
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| Series: | Nature Communications |
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56753-6 |
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| _version_ | 1823861810957123584 |
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| author | Fabio Carrella Segun T. Aroyehun Jana Lasser Almog Simchon David Garcia Stephan Lewandowsky |
| author_facet | Fabio Carrella Segun T. Aroyehun Jana Lasser Almog Simchon David Garcia Stephan Lewandowsky |
| author_sort | Fabio Carrella |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Recent evidence shows that US politicians’ conception of honesty has undergone a bifurcation, with authentic but evidence-free “belief-speaking” becoming more prominent and differentiated from evidence-based “fact-speaking”. Here we examine the downstream consequences of those two ways of conceiving honesty by investigating user engagement with fact-speaking and belief-speaking texts by members of the US Congress on Twitter (now X). We measure the conceptions of honesty of a sample of tweets and replies using computational text processing, and check whether the conceptions of honesty in the tweets align with those in their replies. We find that the conceptions of honesty used in replies align with those of the tweets, suggesting a “contagion”. Notably, this contagion replicates under controlled experimental conditions. Our study highlights the crucial role of political leaders in setting the tone of the conversation on social media. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-6944945da3204e4c846af51e802a7cb8 |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2041-1723 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-02-01 |
| publisher | Nature Portfolio |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Nature Communications |
| spelling | doaj-art-6944945da3204e4c846af51e802a7cb82025-02-09T12:45:41ZengNature PortfolioNature Communications2041-17232025-02-0116111410.1038/s41467-025-56753-6Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public repliesFabio Carrella0Segun T. Aroyehun1Jana Lasser2Almog Simchon3David Garcia4Stephan Lewandowsky5School of Psychological Science, University of BristolDepartment of Politics and Public Administration, University of KonstanzIDea_Lab, University of GrazDepartment of Psychology, Ben-Gurion University of the NegevDepartment of Politics and Public Administration, University of KonstanzSchool of Psychological Science, University of BristolAbstract Recent evidence shows that US politicians’ conception of honesty has undergone a bifurcation, with authentic but evidence-free “belief-speaking” becoming more prominent and differentiated from evidence-based “fact-speaking”. Here we examine the downstream consequences of those two ways of conceiving honesty by investigating user engagement with fact-speaking and belief-speaking texts by members of the US Congress on Twitter (now X). We measure the conceptions of honesty of a sample of tweets and replies using computational text processing, and check whether the conceptions of honesty in the tweets align with those in their replies. We find that the conceptions of honesty used in replies align with those of the tweets, suggesting a “contagion”. Notably, this contagion replicates under controlled experimental conditions. Our study highlights the crucial role of political leaders in setting the tone of the conversation on social media.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56753-6 |
| spellingShingle | Fabio Carrella Segun T. Aroyehun Jana Lasser Almog Simchon David Garcia Stephan Lewandowsky Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies Nature Communications |
| title | Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies |
| title_full | Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies |
| title_fullStr | Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies |
| title_full_unstemmed | Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies |
| title_short | Different honesty conceptions align across US politicians' tweets and public replies |
| title_sort | different honesty conceptions align across us politicians tweets and public replies |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-56753-6 |
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