Author: Matthew Davis / Source: Big Think
- Recent research challenged study participants to pick real news headlines from fake ones.
- The results showed that people prone to delusional thinking, religious fundamentalists, and dogmatists tended to believe all news, regardless of plausibility.
- What can you do to protect yourself and others from fake news?
Did you know that in the fall of 2016, Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails contained coded messages alluding to a pedophilia ring held in the basement of the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant? Or that billionaire George Soros personally funded a migrant caravan to invade the United States?
While most people would have difficulty believing these claims without more evidence, many are willing to accept them as is. “Pizzagate” has been thoroughly debunked (Comet Ping Pong doesn’t even have a basement), and the individual who originally posted the migrant caravan theory admitted that he had made it up whole cloth.
Arguably, one of the most unique aspects of the 2016 election was the rise of fake news. But some of these headlines seem so obviously outside the realm of reality it’s hard to see how someone could buy into them. However, recent research published in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition helps to explain which groups are more prone to believing fake news and why.
Who believes in fake news?
The study focused on two key characteristics: analytical thinking and open mindedness. Analytical thinking is simply the tendency to analyze cause and effect, to consider things logically; it requires the suppression of immediate, intuitive conclusions and the use of working memory to consider an argument’s premises and reach a logically sound conclusion.
Open-minded thinking is related, but slightly different. Open-minded thinkers are prone to actively searching for alternative explanations for things, and they are willing to incorporate information that challenges previously held beliefs.
We all have a greater or lesser tendency to think in these ways. But prior research has shown that these two characteristics tend to be low in three groups of people: religious fundamentalists, people prone to delusional thinking, and people prone to dogmatism (i.e., the expression of opinions and beliefs as though they were fact). Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that these three groups were the worst at distinguishing between fake and real news. Here’s how they found that out.
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images
Comet Ping Pong, the pizza…
The post Who believes fake news? Study identifies 3 groups of people appeared first on FeedBox.