Falsely Accused or Getting Away With It: Political Ideology Relates to Concern About Social Errors

Imagine you're a teacher, and one of your students tells you that their dog ate their homework. Maybe you find this decades-old excuse unbelievable and you're inclined to accuse the student of lying. Or maybe you lean towards accepting the excuse for late homework and give the student an extension. Either way, you risk making a mistake. If you don't accept the excuse, you risk making a false accusation.  If you do accept the excuse, you risk letting the student get away with lying.  Which mistake would bother you more?

My colleagues and I wondered who is more bothered by each of these errors—false accusations or getting away with wrongdoing. Political ideology was one factor that came to mind, as liberals and conservatives tend to differ in how they think about the social world, especially when it comes to negative things like errors.

Do Liberals and Conservatives Differ in Their Concern About Errors?

To test this idea, we developed scenarios in which a person either got away with wrongdoing or was falsely accused of wrongdoing. For example, a parent didn't notice their child doing something bad (the child got away with it), or a parent yelled at a child for something they didn't do (the child was falsely accused). We conducted six studies using a variety of samples, including college students and online samples of adults throughout the U.S. In our first few studies, participants rated how much each scenario bothered them. We then examined how their responses to these scenarios related to their political ideology.

We found that the more liberal a person was, the more false accusations of wrongdoing bothered them. In contrast, the more conservative a person was, the more getting away with wrongdoing bothered them.

This relationship was most apparent for social rather than economic issues. Social political ideology reflects people's beliefs about cultural issues with moral implications (such as abortion), whereas economic political ideology reflects their beliefs about fiscal matters (such as government spending). For many ideological differences in social thinking, social rather than political ideology is key. 

Nobody liked either of these errors. Both liberals and conservatives were more bothered by errors that falsely accused an innocent person compared to errors that failed to detect a person's guilt. The differences emerged when comparing how bothered liberals and conservatives were relative to one another. Liberals were more bothered than conservatives by false accusations, whereas conservatives were more bothered than liberals by failures to detect guilt.

Why Are Conservatives More Bothered by Failures to Detect Guilt? 

We thought conservatives might be more bothered by errors that failed to detect guilt because they are more sensitive to potential threats than liberals. When people commit wrongdoing and aren't held accountable, they are free to go commit more wrongdoing, which poses a threat to the rest of society.

To test this idea, we varied how much threat each error posed. Threat was either ambiguous (for example, a person who robbed several homes was never caught) or high (for example, a person who assaulted someone was never caught). We found that everyone was bothered to the same degree when threat was high, but conservatives were more bothered than liberals by the ambiguous threats.  This suggests that conservatives perceived these ambiguous errors as more threating than did liberals.

Consistent with this suggestion, we found in another study that conservatives had higher scores on a measure of threat sensitivity. Threat sensitivity was in turn related to being more bothered by failures to detect guilt.

It is also possible that conservatives are more bothered by failures to detect guilt because they believe that punishment is necessary for justice to be served—an idea called retributive justice—and they believe it is moral to respect and obey authorities. People who believe in retributive justice think it is unjust for a guilty person to evade punishment. In addition, punishment is typically handed down from authorities, so evading punishment could be seen as disrespectful of authorities. Compared to liberals, conservatives were more likely to believe in retributive justice and moralize respect for authority. In turn, beliefs in retributive justice and moralization of respect for authority related to greater concern about failures to detect guilt.

Why Are Liberals More Bothered by False Accusations?

We wondered if humanitarianism—the idea that all people should be treated with compassion—and fairness might explain why liberals are bothered by false accusations. False accusations of wrongdoing undermine humanitarian principles because they result in people facing consequences that they don't deserve, which is also clearly unfair.

We found that, compared to conservatives, liberals endorsed humanitarianism and moralized fairness to a greater degree. In turn, beliefs in humanitarianism and moralization of fairness related to greater concern about errors that falsely accused a person of wrongdoing.

Summary and Conclusions

Our studies showed that compared to liberals, conservatives were more concerned about errors that failed to detect a person's guilt. Potential reasons for this include conservatives' increased sensitivity to threat, greater belief in retributive justice, and moralization of respect for authority. In contrast, compared to conservatives, liberals were more concerned about errors that falsely accused someone of wrongdoing. This might be due in part to liberals' greater belief in humanitarianism and moralization of fairness.

Why does any of this matter? In everyday life, people are regularly faced with situations where a person could be either innocent or guilty and they just don't know which is the case. The way people think about a person's potential guilt or innocence has ramifications for the way they see the world, their relationships with others, and even the structure of society. For example, someone who is concerned about people getting away with transgressions may be distrustful in their relationships with friends and family, which could undermine the quality of those relationships.

People differ in how they weigh the risk of judging someone innocent or guilty. Our studies suggest that political ideology is one factor accounting for these differences. So, the next time you're called for jury duty or think a friend may be lying to you, think carefully—could your ideology be influencing your reaction to potential transgressions?

For Further Reading

Mallinas, S. R., Kievit, D. L., & Plant, E. A. (2023). Trial by ideology: Ideological differences in responses to errors in determining guilt in the United States. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 108, 104489. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2023.104489

Stephanie Mallinas is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College.  She studies how ideological and moral beliefs influence prejudice, stereotyping, and other forms of social judgment.