Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news
Name
s41235-020-00252-3
Description
Published version
Size
1.55 MB
Format
Unknown
Checksum (MD5)
600e4d65864faac1db3d19751b215177
Author(s)
Martel, Cameron
Pennycook, Gordon
Rand, David Gertler
Date Issued
October 2020
Journal
Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Citation
Martel, Cameron et al. "Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news." Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 5, 1 (October 2020): 47 © 2020 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
What is the role of emotion in susceptibility to believing fake news? Prior work on the psychology of misinformation has focused primarily on the extent to which reason and deliberation hinder versus help the formation of accurate beliefs. Several studies have suggested that people who engage in more reasoning are less likely to fall for fake news. However, the role of reliance on emotion in belief in fake news remains unclear. To shed light on this issue, we explored the relationship between experiencing specific emotions and believing fake news (Study 1; N = 409). We found that across a wide range of specific emotions, heightened emotionality at the outset of the study was predictive of greater belief in fake (but not real) news posts. Then, in Study 2, we measured and manipulated reliance on emotion versus reason across four experiments (total N = 3884). We found both correlational and causal evidence that reliance on emotion increases belief in fake news: self-reported use of emotion was positively associated with belief in fake (but not real) news, and inducing reliance on emotion resulted in greater belief in fake (but not real) news stories compared to a control or to inducing reliance on reason. These results shed light on the unique role that emotional processing may play in susceptibility to fake news.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3
