Adaptive Intuitions in Complex Media Environments Shape Belief in Misinformation

Abstract

Belief in misinformation has been linked in part to digital media environments promoting reliance on intuition -- which in turn has been shown to increase belief in falsehoods. Here, I propose that this apparently irrational behavior may actually result from ecologically rational adaptations to complex environments. In a large survey experiment, I test whether intuitive belief in misinformation may result from these rational adaptations by randomizing participants to be shown either a largely true or largely false news feed. I show that individuals make more frequent and quicker errors on the less common headline type, and less frequent errors on the more common headline type. After seeing many true headlines, a participant is more likely to misidentify a subsequent false headline as true, and vice versa after seeing many false headlines. This pattern is consistent with adaptation to the proportion of true and false content (the veracity base rate). I use computational modeling to show that these differences are driven by intuitions, which correspond to Bayesian priors, about the veracity of the content -- intuitions which then spill over into new environments. The results, when paired with the observation that the news consumed by most Americans is overwhelmingly true, suggest that belief in misinformation and the intuitions that underlie it are not necessarily a failing of humans in digital environments but can be a byproduct of rational adaptations to them.