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- Title
Sorting Fact From Fiction Without Source Evaluation Is a 50-50 Guess in the Disinformation Age.
- Authors
Endresen, Andreas; Campbell, Amanda; Torresson, Bridget; Terry, Christopher
- Abstract
Sorting fact from fiction has become a concern in an age of digital information overload and deliberate disinformation campaigns. In particular, people may lose track of critical source information when browsing news stories encountered through a social media feed. Individual differences in information processing styles, such as need for cognition and choice maximization, may influence how people approach the task of judging the veracity of news information. To test how well people sort fact from fiction without source information, we created a quiz that included excerpts from 20 different news articles that appeared somewhere on the internet from 2017-2018. Half of the stories described true events; half described events that did not actually occur. Results showed that participants performed no better than chance at sorting true news stories from fake ones when source information was not provided (M = 0.51, SD = 0.12, p = .33). Individual differences in need for cognition (r = .00, p = .99) and choice maximization (r = -.03, p = .73) did not predict success on the news quiz. However, participants who reported following the news more closely were more confident in their ability to sort true stories from false ones (d = 0.63, p = .02) despite failing to perform better than chance on the quiz. This indicates that source evaluation may be a critical aspect of determining the truthfulness of a claim, especially in the disinformation age. In particular, news followers may overestimate the extent to which they can sort fact from fiction if they are not carefully vetting their sources.
- Subjects
DISINFORMATION; INFORMATION processing; INFORMATION resources; FICTION; INFORMATION overload
- Publication
Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 2020, Vol 25, p213
- ISSN
2164-8204
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.24839/2325-7342.JN25.3.213