Moralization of Rationality Can Stimulate Sharing of Hostile and False News on Social Media, but Intellectual Humility Inhibits it

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many assume that if citizens were more inclined to moralize the values of evidence-based and logical thinking, they would be less likely to share politically hostile, conspiratorial, and false claims on social media. In contrast, on the basis of theories of status seeking and persuasion, we argue that moralization of rationality may actually stimulate the spread of hostile partisan news online, including fabricated claims. Across three large surveys (N = 4800) run on U.S. respondents (one exploratory and two pre-registered), we provide empirical evidence for this prediction and demonstrate that the moralization of rationality can be a form of moral grandstanding by status seekers inclined to spread hostile (mis)information to reach partisan goals. In contrast to such grandstanding with respect to rationality, our studies find robust evidence that intellectual humility – that is, the awareness that intuitions are fallible and that trusting others is often desirable – may protect people from both sharing and believing hostile and false political news online.