Fake news is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics of our age, not least due to its ability to influence elections. Given the profile of fake news, one would imagine the ability to use fact checking sources would be something that would be in heavy demand, but a recent study suggests that isn’t always the case. What’s more, even if we do read such sources, we’re not often swayed in our opinions when presented with the new information.
Instead, people did seem to update their opinions only when the update came from a source they had already bought into. So conservatives would happily update their opinion if a correction appeared in Breitbart.
“Our experimental results demonstrate that Republicans are more likely to correct their false information when cued with the ideologically consistent source, while Democrats were more persuaded by the ideologically inconsistent source,” the authors say. “Neither group sharply corrected their beliefs when confronted with information from the fact-checking organization.”
Underpinning democracy
The researchers were conscious of the polarized climate in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, and wanted to explore how false beliefs can be corrected. These weren’t beliefs that could best be described as partisan, but rather opinions that were factually incorrect.
Volunteers were asked to read an article (the majority of which were false) that discussed election-fraud related claims, before rating the truthfulness of each article. In each instance, the source of the information was changed.
The research revealed that fact-checking sources did little to persuade people from either Democrat or Republican sides. Indeed, they were often more likely to believe the lies after they had read countering information on a fact-checking website.
“Fact-checking organizations may provide a public good in their attempts to correct the record, but we should not expect them to lead to a more accurately informed public,” the authors say.
The findings are especially worrying as whilst partisan news sources were most powerful in changing our minds, they were the least likely to provide such countervailing information.
Who believes fake news?
This should be especially worrying as a second study suggests that the most dogmatic among us are also the most likely to be taken in by fake news. It found that the less open minded we are, the more likely fake news is to be effective.
The finding emerged after nearly 1,000 volunteers were presented with one of 24 different headlines, half of which were real and half were fake. The participants were asked to rate their confidence in the accuracy of each headline. They were also tested for their personality type to determine how analytical they were, how dogmatic and socially authoritarian they tended to be.
Sadly, it appeared that those with lower analytical skills and higher dogmatism and social authoritarianism were much more likely to swallow the fake news.
Help from your friends
A recent study from the University of Missouri suggests a successful buffer might be afforded by our peer group. Volunteers were given a scavenger hunt style challenge whereby they had to answer various questions with the help of online sources and their own personal knowledge. Despite both groups having equal access to the web, it transpired that the interactions between participants had the biggest impact upon group performance.
“We imagined that working in groups would actually help the students find the correct information, but that was not the case,” the researchers say. “In fact, group dynamics outweighed information access, and discussion and decision-making was more important than the facts.”
For instance, one of the groups did especially badly in large part because a couple of team members froze out the input of a third team member, despite them ultimately having the right answer. By contrast, the group that performed best adopted a strategy of researching individually, before sharing their answers to come up with a collective answer.
The authors believe we might need to think afresh about the impact group dynamics have on the way we both identify and assess information we find online. This can have a big impact in a range of scenarios, not least in classrooms, where the team believe teachers should pay particular attention to these findings.
“Students might need further instruction and guidelines on how to evaluate online information, especially on social media,” they say. “Teachers might also consider creating guidelines for how groups will work together in these situations so that every student has the opportunity to be heard.”
Herein lies the problem I suppose. Not only are the partisan publications most likely read by dogmatic people more unlikely to change their stance, it’s probably also unlikely that dogmatic individuals are going to have a cross-section of friends to sway their opinions. It doesn’t create a particularly fertile environment for opinions to change, which should be a concern for society as a whole.
