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.
Highlights
Toward a Psychology of False and Misleading Online News Fabricated news is nothing new
Reflect about the accuracy of what they see on social media may be effective in slowing the spread of misinformation
The research we have synthesized here shows that the common narrative, whereby failing to differentiate false or misleading news from truth is a symptom of political polarization in a 'posttruth' world, is not an appropriate characterization
Summary
We synthesize a burgeoning literature investigating why people believe and share false or highly misleading news online. 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. During the 2016 US Presidential Election and UK Brexit Referendum, a different form of fake news (see Glossary) rose to prominence (Box 1): false or highly misleading political 'news' stories, primarily originating on social media [1]. Misleading hyperpartisan news, as well as yellow journalism [5], are related forms of problematic news content that are likely sources of political polarization [6] What is it about human psychology – and its interaction with social media [7,8] – that explains the failure to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate content online?
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