"The
aim of using fake news as propaganda is to make people think and behave in ways
they wouldn’t otherwise—for example, hold a view that is contradicted by
overwhelming scientific consensus. When this nefarious aim is achieved,
citizens no longer have the ability to act in their own self-interest. In the
logic of democracy, this isn’t just bad for that citizen—it’s bad for society."
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Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News
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Cognitive Ability and Vulnerability to Fake News
Researchers
identify a major risk factor for pernicious effects of misinformation.
- David Z. Hambrick
- Madeline Marquardt
“Fake news” is Donald Trump’s
favorite catchphrase. Since the 2016 election, it has appeared in hundreds of tweets
by the President, decrying everything from accusations of sexual assault
against him to the Russian collusion investigation to reports that he watches
up to eight hours of television a day. Trump may just use “fake news” as a
rhetorical device to discredit stories he doesn’t like, but there is evidence
that real fake news is a serious problem. As one alarming example, an analysis by the
internet media company Buzzfeed revealed that during the final three months of
the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, the 20 most popular false election stories
generated around 1.3 million more Facebook engagements—shares, reactions, and
comments—than did the 20 most popular legitimate stories. The most popular fake
story was “Pope Francis Shocks World, Endorses Donald Trump for
President.”
Fake news can distort people’s
beliefs even after being debunked. For example, repeated over and over, a story
such as the one about the Pope endorsing Trump can create a glow around a
political candidate that persists long after the story is exposed as fake. A
2017 study published
in the journal Intelligence suggests that some people may have an
especially difficult time rejecting misinformation. Asked to rate a fictitious
person on a range of character traits, people who scored low on a test of
cognitive ability continued to be influenced by damaging information about the
person even after they were explicitly told the information was false. The
study is significant because it identifies what may be a major risk factor for
vulnerability to fake news.
Ghent University researchers Jonas
De keersmaecker and Arne Roets first had over 400 subjects take a personality
test. They then randomly assigned each subject to one of two conditions. In the
experimental condition, the subjects read a biographical description of a young
woman named Nathalie. The bio explained that Nathalie, a nurse at a local
hospital, “was arrested for stealing drugs from the hospital; she has been
stealing drugs for 2 years and selling them on the street in order to buy
designer clothes.” The subjects then rated Nathalie on traits such as trustworthiness
and sincerity, after which they took a test of cognitive ability. Finally, the
subjects saw a message on their computer screen explicitly stating that the
information about Nathalie stealing drugs and getting arrested was not true,
and then rated her again on the same traits. The control condition was
identical, except that subjects were not given the paragraph with the false
information and rated Nathalie only once.
The subjects in the experimental
condition initially rated Nathalie much more negatively than did the subjects
in the control condition. This was not surprising, considering that they had
just learned she was a thief and a drug dealer. The interesting question was
whether cognitive ability would predict attitude adjustment—that is, the degree
to which the subjects in the experimental condition would rate Nathalie more
favorably after being told that this information was false. It did: subjects
high in cognitive ability adjusted their ratings more than did those lower in
cognitive ability. The subjects with lower cognitive ability had more trouble
shaking their negative first impression of Nathalie. This was true even after
the researchers statistically controlled for the subjects’ level of
open-mindedness (their willingness to change their mind when wrong) and
right-wing authoritarianism (their intolerance toward others), as assessed by
the personality test. Thus, even if a person was open-minded and tolerant, a
low level of cognitive ability put them at risk for being unjustifiably harsh in
their second evaluation of Nathalie.
One possible explanation for this
finding is based on the theory that a person’s cognitive ability reflects how
well they can regulate the contents of working memory—their “mental workspace”
for processing information. First proposed
by the cognitive psychologists Lynn Hasher and Rose Zacks, this theory holds
that some people are more prone to “mental clutter” than other people. In other
words, some people are less able to discard (or “inhibit”) information from
their working memory that is no longer relevant to the task at hand—or, as in
the case of Nathalie, information that has been discredited. Research on cognitive aging
indicates that, in adulthood, this ability declines considerably with advancing
age, suggesting that older adults may also be especially vulnerable to fake
news. Another reason why cognitive ability may predict vulnerability to fake
news is that it correlates highly with education.
Through education, people may develop meta-cognitive skills—strategies
for monitoring and regulating one’s own thinking—that can be used to combat the
effects of misinformation.
Meanwhile, other research is
shedding light on the mechanisms underlying the effects of misinformation.
Repeating a false claim increases its believability, giving it an air of what
Stephen Colbert famously called “truthiness.”
Known as the illusion of truth effect, this phenomenon was first demonstrated
in the laboratory by Hasher and her colleagues. On each of three days, subjects
listened to plausible-sounding statements and rated each on whether they
thought it was true. Half of the statements were in fact true, such as Australia
is approximately equal in area to the continental United States, whereas
the other half were false, such as Zachary Taylor was the first president to
die in office (it was William Henry Harrison). Some of the
statements were repeated across days, whereas others were presented only once.
The results showed that the average truth rating increased from day to day for
the repeated statements, but remained constant for the non-repeated statements,
indicating that subjects mistook familiarity for verity.
More recent research reveals that
even knowledge of the truth doesn’t necessarily protect against the illusion of
truth. In a 2015 study published
in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Lisa Fazio and her
colleagues asked subjects to rate a set of statements on how interesting they
found them. Following Hasher and colleagues’ procedure, some of the statements
were true, whereas others were false. The subjects then rated a second
set of statements for truthfulness on a six-point scale, from definitely false
to definitely true. Some of the statements were repeated from the first set,
whereas others were new. Finally, the subjects took a knowledge test that
included questions based on the statements. The results revealed that
repetition increased the subjects’ perception of the truthfulness of false
statements, even for statements they knew to be false. For example, even
if a subject correctly answered Pacific Ocean to the question What is
the largest ocean on Earth? on the knowledge test, they still tended
to give the false statement The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth
a higher truth rating if it was repeated. When a claim was made to feel
familiar through repetition, subjects neglected to consult their own knowledge
base in rating the claim’s truthfulness.
These studies add to scientific
understanding of the fake news problem, which is providing a foundation for an
evidenced-based approach to addressing the problem. A recommendation that
follows from research on the illusion of truth effect is to serve as your own
fact checker. If you are convinced that some claim is true, ask yourself why.
Is it because you have credible evidence that the claim is true, or is it just because
you’ve encountered the claim over and over? Also ask yourself if you know of
any evidence that refutes the claim. (You just might be surprised to find that
you do.) This type of recommendation could be promoted through public service announcements, which have been shown to be effective for things like
getting people to litter less and recycle more. For its part, research on
individual differences in susceptibility to fake news, such as the study by De
keersmaecker and Roets, can help to identify people who are particularly
important to reach through this type of informational campaign.
At a more general level, this
research underscores the threat that fake news poses to democratic society. The
aim of using fake news as propaganda is to make people think and behave in ways
they wouldn’t otherwise—for example, hold a view that is contradicted by
overwhelming scientific consensus. When this nefarious aim is achieved,
citizens no longer have the ability to act in their own self-interest. In the
logic of democracy, this isn’t just bad for that citizen—it’s bad for society.
David Z. Hambrick is a professor in the department of psychology at Michigan
State University. His research focuses on individual differences in cognitive
ability and complex skill.
Madeline Marquardt
graduated Michigan State University in 2018 with a degree in Neuroscience and
additional degree in Professional Writing and is now a TEFL Peace Corps
Volunteer in Armenia.
This post originally appeared on
Scientific American and was published February 6, 2018. This article is
republished here with permission.
