
We synthesize a burgeoning literature investigating why people believe and share false or highly misleading news online. Contrary to a common narrative whereby politics drives susceptibility to fake news, people are better at discerning truth from falsehood when evaluating politically concordant news. Instead, poor truth discernment is associated with lack of careful reasoning and relevant knowledge, and the use of heuristics like familiarity. Furthermore, there is a substantial disconnect between what people believe and what they share on social media. This dissociation is largely driven by inattention, more so than purposeful sharing of misinformation. Thus, interventions can successfully nudge social media users to focus more on accuracy. Crowdsourced veracity ratings can also be leveraged to improve social media ranking algorithms.
Social Cognition, Behavioral Economics, Personality and Situations, Judgment and Decision Making, Deception, Impression Formation, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Consumer Psychology, Intragroup Processes, Humans, Attention, Problem Solving, Individual Differences, Communication, Politics, Cognitive Psychology, Social and Personality Psychology, Reasoning, Attitudes and Persuasion, Nudges, Consumer Decision Making, Psychology, other, Social Media, Biases, Framing, and Heuristics
Social Cognition, Behavioral Economics, Personality and Situations, Judgment and Decision Making, Deception, Impression Formation, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Consumer Psychology, Intragroup Processes, Humans, Attention, Problem Solving, Individual Differences, Communication, Politics, Cognitive Psychology, Social and Personality Psychology, Reasoning, Attitudes and Persuasion, Nudges, Consumer Decision Making, Psychology, other, Social Media, Biases, Framing, and Heuristics
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 1K | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 0.01% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Top 0.1% | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 0.01% |
