About the Study

The Colbert Report Political Rorschach Test is a Poli-Tea Politics Project, adapted from a study by Heather LaMarre, Kristen Landreville and Michael Beam, entitled "The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report" and published in The International Journal of Press/Politics in the spring of 2009.

In the abstract to their paper, the authors reported their findings as follows:

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.