Misinformation and the currency of democratic citizenship

Scholars have documented the deficiencies in political knowledge among Amer ican citizens. Another problem, misinformation, has received less attention . People are misinformed when they confidently hold wrong beliefs. We prese nt evidence of misinformation about welfare and show that this misinformati on acts as an obstacle to educating the public with correct facts. Moreover , widespread misinformation can lead to collective preferences that are far different from those that would exist if people were correctly informed. T he misinformation phenomenon has implications for two currently influential scholarly literatures: the study of political heuristics and the study of elite persuasion and issue framing.