More research I wish I had done: Ohio State team proves Steven Colbert can fool some of the people all of the time

I always figured everyone knew The Colbert Report was satire.  I mean, c'mon; it's Comedy Central for krissakes!  Guess who thinks his conservative persona's legit?

The journal article is titled "The Irony of Satire:  Political Ideology and the Motivation to Se What You Want to See in The Colbert Report."  The abstract reads as follows...

This study investigated biased message processing of political satire in The Colbert Report and the influence of political ideology on perceptions of Stephen Colbert. Results indicate that political ideology influences biased processing of ambiguous political messages and source in late-night comedy. Using data from an experiment (N = 332), we found that individual-level political ideology significantly predicted perceptions of Colbert's political ideology. Additionally, there was no significant difference between the groups in thinking Colbert was funny, but conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements. Conservatism also significantly predicted perceptions that Colbert disliked liberalism. Finally, a post hoc analysis revealed that perceptions of Colbert's political opinions fully mediated the relationship between political ideology and individual-level opinion. [emphasis mine]

Oh, my.  I guess it figures, given that 27% (give or take a few points) of the population still thinks George Bush was awesome.

The article can be found in The International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 14, No. 2, 212-231 (2009), and was authored by Heather L. LaMarre, Kristen D. Landreville and Michael A. Beam from The Ohio State University.

[h/t Kos]