Personal stories are powerful in political arguments but there are pitfalls

Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
Personal experiences — more than cold, hard facts — may be a way to bridge the moral and political divides that have fractured so many families and friendships. But that same cognitive tug can also be leveraged to fuel misinformation.
Why it matters: Personal stories, especially those about experiences of harm, may establish common ground among people who don't agree on politics, according to a new study. But they are a powerful driver of what we perceive as true and can be misinterpreted or misused, experts warn.
Details: In the first experiments in a series of 15 studies, Kurt Gray, a social psychologist at the University of North Carolina, and a team of researchers found that when people were asked to imagine interacting with someone who had a different political view, they rated opponents who presented facts as more rational than those whose arguments were based on personal experience.

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