Who is most likely to fall for fake news?
By UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG
“Some people
believe Fake News even when the scientific facts clearly contradict them,” says
psychologist Jan Philipp Rudloff. “We wanted to know why this is the case and
investigate the role played by our ideas about the nature of knowledge and
facts.”
Rudloff
carried out a thorough experiment on this topic while pursuing his Ph.D. in the
department of communication psychology under Professor Markus Appel. Along with
Appel, he confronted more than 600 Americans with different headlines, such as
“Trump’s first 3 years created 1.5 million fewer jobs than Obama’s last 3.”
Participants were asked to rate how accurate these statements were.
Epistemic beliefs were assessed with a questionnaire
Participants
then completed an extensive questionnaire. Participants were also asked to rate
the importance of strong evidence to them, how much they trust their intuition
when assessing the accuracy of the information, and
how much they believe that politicians, scientists, and the media “fabricate”
facts to serve their agendas.
“We
summarise these aspects as ‘epistemic beliefs’,” Rudloff explains – epistéme
comes from the Greek and means “cognition” or “knowledge”.
In
addition, the questionnaire assessed how important it was for the participants
to assert their own interests (even at the expense of their fellow human
beings). This characteristic is also called the “dark factor of personality”.
It is considered the core of various dark personality traits such as
narcissism, psychopathy, or Machiavellianism. “Everyone is selfish to a certain
degree,” Rudloff explains. “However, it is problematic when people focus on
their own well-being so strongly that the interests of their fellow human
beings no longer play any role.”
People with dark personality traits bend reality according to
their own benefit
The
study showed that the less the participants believed in the existence of facts,
the more difficult it was for them to distinguish true statements from false
ones. In addition, there was a second finding: the stronger the “dark factor of
personality” of the participants was, i.e. the more pronounced their
self-interest at the expense of others, the more they doubted that there was a
difference between scientific findings and mere opinions.
“You
could call their beliefs post-factual; they only believe what feels true to
them,” Jan Philipp Rudloff emphasizes. Accordingly, they find it difficult to
distinguish true statements from false ones, so they particularly often believe
fake news to be true. “People with dark personality traits bend reality to
their own liking. For example: I don’t wear a mask because the coronavirus was
just invented by the media anyways,” Rudloff explains. “Bending the facts based
on selfish motives works especially well when people are convinced that there
are no independent scientific facts anyways.”
In
another study published in spring 2022, Rudloff and Appel, together with Dr.
Fabian Hutmacher from the JMU Department of Psychology of Communication and New
Media, were already able to show that people with dark personality traits were
more likely to endorse COVID-19 conspiracy
theories during the pandemic.
Rudloff
emphasizes, however, that it is by no means only this group that is susceptible
to conspiracy theories and fake news. “Epistemic beliefs are the decisive
factor,” he says. “People who don’t believe in the power of sound evidence and
arguments won’t be swayed by even the most impressive fact-checking –
regardless of their other personality traits.”
Epistemic beliefs develop at a young age
In
psychology, epistemic beliefs are thought to develop and solidify during
childhood and adolescence. For young children, there is only black or white on
many issues: an idea is good or bad, and a proposition is true or false. Later
they learn to differentiate: Whether someone likes Beethoven or is into pop
songs is a matter of taste. During this time, they tend to see different
opinions as equal – even those on matters such as climate change being caused
by humans.
“In
the best case, at some point, we learn to evaluate different positions,” says
Rudloff. “For example: yes, there are different opinions, but some are more by
backed by evidence than others.” But not everyone seems to take this step. In
situations like climate change or COVID-19, where a rational assessment of
arguments is crucial, this deficit can have serious consequences.
Reference:
“When truthiness trumps truth: Epistemic beliefs predict the accurate
discernment of fake news” by Jan Philipp Rudloff and Markus Appel, 2022, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.
DOI: 10.1037/mac0000070