New research suggests that the spread of misinformation among politically devoted conservatives is influenced by identity-driven motives and may be resistant to fact-checks. These individuals tend to prioritize sharing information that aligns with their group identity, regardless of its accuracy. The new research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, utilized behavioral tasks and neuroimaging to understand the underlying processes involved.
Social media has become a major source of news for many adults, but malicious agents are using such platforms to spread misinformation to larger audiences faster than ever before. Online misinformation can have serious real-world consequences, such as fueling political polarization, threatening democracy, and reducing vaccination intentions. Thus, the researchers wanted to understand the psychological processes behind the sharing of misinformation and explore potential interventions to counteract its spread.
“In the past, I had been working on extremism and ‘will to fight’ among supporters of Salafi-jihadist groups. Even though I found those groups very interesting to study, there was a cross-cultural barrier that made it hard for me to have […]
These types of studies are certainly important and powerful. The number of participants enrolled appear reasonable for the conclusions drawn, especially the emphasis on social cohesion as a factor in disseminating inaccurate information. However, it is also important to note that the study indicates that over half the participants obtain all of their news via social media. This is the structural barrier which needs to be addressed. A wide ranging news gathering strategy is the best inoculation against inadvertent assumptions of “truth” for news articles which are false. In this sense social media behaves as an anti-social force. This stated, it is also important to examine how “malinformation” is treated. Malinformation is data which is true but inconvenient for the powers that be. Proposed interventions as listed in the study often lump “misinformation” with “malinformation”, and the strategies used to address a real misinformation problem lose credibility as the blurring of categories is viewed as censorship..