New Study Shows Political Biases Play Major Role in Misinformation Susceptibility

A new study has revealed that one's political biases play a greater role in susceptibility to misinformation than the ability to differentiate between truth and falsehoods. The findings, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, emphasize the significance of misinformation and its effects on individual and societal decision-making in the information age.

Professor Bertram Gawronski, the study's author from the University of Texas at Austin, expressed concern over misinformation's impact on the decision-making process of individuals and “society as a whole.” To examine the influence of political biases on susceptibility to misinformation, the researchers conducted four preregistered experiments involving a total of 2,423 American adults. Participants were recruited via Prolific Academic, a crowdsourcing platform that provides access to diverse samples of participants, based on their identification as either Democrats or Republicans.

During the experiments, participants were presented with 60 news headlines, some of which were biased towards Democrats, some towards Republicans, and some of which were true while others were false. Participants were then asked to judge whether the headlines were true or false or whether they would consider sharing the story on social media.

The results showed that participants demonstrated greater truth sensitivity when judging the veracity of the headlines compared to when deciding whether or not to share them on social media. This finding held true in all four experiments, suggesting that the ability to distinguish between true and false information played a minor role in determining susceptibility to misinformation.

The study's most significant finding was that political biases were the primary predictor of whether individuals were more likely to believe false information that supported their party's views and less likely to believe information that contradicted those views. This held true regardless of whether participants were judging the truth of news or deciding whether to share it online.

Furthermore, the investigation revealed that participants' personal evaluations of their ability to discern fake news and their cognitive reflection level were key factors in their proneness to misinformation. The researchers noted that those who thought they were skilled at identifying fabricated news had a greater inclination to show political partiality when deciding the authenticity of the news. Moreover, individuals were more adept at differentiating between factual and false information when they had more time to ponder over their responses. Nevertheless, this proficiency improvement was only evident when assessing the veracity of news and not when deciding whether to disseminate it or not.

Gawronski noted that the tendency to accept information that aligns with one's personal beliefs and dismiss information that contradicts those beliefs did not arise from “motivated reasoning or wishful thinking,” as previously believed. Instead, the researchers found that overconfidence and a failure to recognize the limits of one's knowledge played a more significant role in the acceptance of “belief-congruent and belief-incongruent” information.

Finally, the study showed that those who were asked to judge the accuracy of news headlines before deciding whether to share them on social media were less likely to share false information. This effect was stronger for news that supported people's political views. The researchers are now exploring whether “making people aware of the limits of their knowledge” can reduce susceptibility to misinformation.