The Psychology of Fake News
Gordon Pennycooka b c✉, David Gertler Randd e f g✉
- aHill/Levene Schools of Business, University of Regina, Regina, SK S4S 0A2, Canada
- bDepartment of Psychology, University of Regina, Regina, SK S4S 0A2, Canada. Electronic address: gordon.pennycook@uregina.ca
- cDepartment of Psychology, University of Regina, Regina, SK S4S 0A2, Canada
- dSloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
- eInstitute for Data, Systems, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
- fDepartment of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Electronic address: drand@mit.edu
- gDepartment of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
- ✉Corresponding author
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Abstract
We synthesize a burgeoning literature investigating why people believe and share false or highly misleading news online. Contrary to a common narrative whereby politics drives susceptibility to fake news, people are 'better' at discerning truth from falsehood (despite greater overall belief) when evaluating politically concordant news. Instead, poor truth discernment is associated with lack of careful reasoning and relevant knowledge, and the use of heuristics such as familiarity. Furthermore, there is a substantial disconnect between what people believe and what they share on social media. This dissociation is largely driven by inattention, more so than by purposeful sharing of misinformation. Thus, interventions can successfully nudge social media users to focus more on accuracy. Crowdsourced veracity ratings can also be leveraged to improve social media ranking algorithms.
TL;DRContrary to a common narrative whereby politics drives susceptibility to fake news, people are 'better' at discerning truth from falsehood (despite greater overall belief) when evaluating politically concordant news. (Semantic Scholar)