True or false? Linguistic and demographic factors influence veracity judgment of COVID-19 rumors

Abstract

Rumors about COVID-19 have been prevalent around the world during the pandemic. Using a veracity judgment task, the present study investigates whether young adults (N = 112) demonstrated measurable differences in processing COVID-19 rumors during the pandemic. They were instructed to read a statement related to COVID-19 and then to evaluate whether it was true or false. We examine the influence of the content characteristics of the statement and the demographic variables on the reading times, the accuracy rates, and the response times of the veracity judgment. We found that the reading times of rumors were only influenced by the length of rumors. Participants spent more time reading a rumor when it was longer. The length of rumors also influenced the accuracy rates of the veracity judgment. Participants were less accurate when the rumor was longer. Furthermore, we found that participants were faster at correctly rejecting false rumors than at accepting true rumors. Importantly, we found a significant effect of family socioeconomic status (SES) on the accuracy rates for which participants from families with higher SES had higher accuracy rates of veracity judgment. Our results demonstrated that both content characteristics (i.e., length) and demographic variables (i.e., family SES) influenced the veracity judgment of COVID-19 rumors.