The Psychology of Fake News
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 ev...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Elsevier BV
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144268 |
| _version_ | 1826212755361759232 |
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| author | Pennycook, Gordon Rand, David G |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Pennycook, Gordon Rand, David G |
| author_sort | Pennycook, Gordon |
| collection | MIT |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:37:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/144268 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T15:37:23Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | Elsevier BV |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1442682023-06-12T17:37:15Z The Psychology of Fake News Pennycook, Gordon Rand, David G Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences 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. 2022-08-08T16:18:29Z 2022-08-08T16:18:29Z 2021 2022-08-08T16:12:32Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144268 Pennycook, Gordon and Rand, David G. 2021. "The Psychology of Fake News." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 25 (5). en 10.1016/J.TICS.2021.02.007 Trends in Cognitive Sciences Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Elsevier BV Elsevier |
| spellingShingle | Pennycook, Gordon Rand, David G The Psychology of Fake News |
| title | The Psychology of Fake News |
| title_full | The Psychology of Fake News |
| title_fullStr | The Psychology of Fake News |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Psychology of Fake News |
| title_short | The Psychology of Fake News |
| title_sort | psychology of fake news |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/144268 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT pennycookgordon thepsychologyoffakenews AT randdavidg thepsychologyoffakenews AT pennycookgordon psychologyoffakenews AT randdavidg psychologyoffakenews |