Watching Colbert made conservatives even more conservative

Students who watched “Colbert” also ended up feeling less confident about their understanding of politics: They were more likely to agree with the statement, “Sometimes politics and government seem so complicated that a person like me can’t really understand what’s going on.” (Similar research on “The Daily Show” shows the opposite effect: Jon Stewart—whose style invites his audience to feel like they’re in on the joke—leaves viewers feeling more confident in their political knowledge.) “The mixed messages contained in Colbert’s presentation create the possibility that young viewers may actually become more confused about politics,” write Baumgartner and Morris.

One major caveat is that the study only measured viewers’ feelings directly after watching the clips; we don’t know if there was any meaningful long-term effect. And like many psychology studies, it relied on a pretty homogeneous sample: 81 percent were white and everyone was under 25. They were also a little more politically sophisticated than the general population, having been recruited from intro-level political science courses. In other ways, though, the students were a good representation of Colbert’s average viewers. Their political affiliations were similar to those of the population at large—30 percent Democrat, 37 percent Republican, 33 percent Independent or “no preference.” Their TV habits also resembled those of their age group at that time: 27 percent regularly watched “The Colbert Report” or “The Daily Show,” as did 26 percent of 18–29 year olds in the country.

Colbert isn’t the first left-wing comic to be blamed for accidentally aiding conservatives. Back in the 1970s, liberal commentators began to worry that viewers of the popular sitcom “All in the Family” might not be laughing at the racist, bigoted Archie—as the writers intended—but identifying with him. In 1973, a pair of psychologists, Neil Vidmar and Milton Rokeach, set out to test this hypothesis empirically. Vidmar and Rokeach questioned 237 Midwestern high school students on their interpretations of “All in the Family,” and, as they suspected, they found that not everyone was getting the joke. Forty-two percent believed Archie usually “wins” at the end of the episode, and 35 percent said there’s nothing wrong with Archie’s use of ethnic slurs.