Fake News

The article “Why Do People Fall for Fake News?” was found in the January 20, 2019 edition of The New York Times. This article dealt with two different theories explaining why people tend to believe the political outlandish false propaganda presented on social media, TV etc. One set of research [Emotion] found that believing in false information was associated with holding partisan convictions and employing the use of rationalization. In other words, people persuade themselves to believe what they want, rather than attempting to discover the truth. Those that are smarter are better able to employ the defense mechanism of rationalization, which is changing the irrational into rational. These researchers found that on climate change and gun control issues, subjects who scored higher on measures of science and numerical ability { More analytical}, regardless of their political persuasion .were better able to convince themselves { Rationalization} regarding these two political issues.

A second hypothesis [Cognition] stated that because we are lazy, we often fail to exercise significant reasoning. Individuals who think more analytically and not just trust their “gut “were less superstitious, less likely to believe in conspiracy theories and less receptive to seemingly profound, but actually empty assertions or slogans. In other words, cognitive laziness, especially in the context of social media where headlines and news items are often scanned or merely glanced at, can be the main culprit. These researchers used a cognitive reflection test to test their hypothesis. They found that people who had higher reflective reasoning scores were better at discerning the true from the false regardless of headlines or of their political persuasion.

These experimenters suggested that teaching reasoning abilities should be part of the solution in confronting the nonsense and bias found on social media. These researchers are excited because their research showed that reason doesn’t have to be totally compromised by the myopic vision of partisan beliefs.

To Be Continued