The More We See Fake News, The More Likely We Are To Share It

By Emily Reynolds Over the last few years, so-called “fake news” — purposefully untrue misinformation spread online — has become more and more of a concern. From extensive media coverage of the issue to government committees being set up for its investigation, fake news is at the top of the agenda — and more often than we’d like, on top of our newsfeeds. But how does exposure to misinformation impact the way we respond to it? A new study, published in Psychological Science, suggests that the more we see it, the more we’re likely to spread it. And considering the fact that fake news is more likely to go viral than real news, this could have worrying implications. Research has found that previously encountered information feels more “fluent” — in other words, we find it easier to process. This, in turn, gives it a “ring of truthfulness”, write Daniel Effron from London Business School and Medha Raj from the University of Southern California: repeated information feels true, even as we simultaneously acknowledge it’s not. And, the pair predicted, because our intuitions often drive our moral judgements, we may feel it less unethical to share frequently encountered misinformation, even if we know it’s false, simply because it has this “feeling” of truth. To test their hypothesis, the team surveyed 138 men and women from the US. Participants, who identified with a range of political affiliations, were first presented with si...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Decision making Morality Twitter Source Type: blogs