The susceptibility of people to fake news is something that is presenting a profound risk to democracy as we know it today.  Whilst there have been numerous attempts to cut fake news off at source, somewhat less attention has been given to making us less vulnerable to it.  Whilst it is reasonably well known that society today has become increasingly polarized, and this has resulted in people becoming less inclined to seek out news that differs from their predisposed point of view, new research from Cornell Tech suggests that it only takes a small financial payment to encourage people to dig a little deeper.

The researchers recruited volunteers to participate in an experiment whereby they had to guess the accuracy of news headlines.  The volunteers were told they would receive a bonus if they correctly did so.  It transpired that this small inducement was enough to encourage people to look beyond their predisposed opinion to look for what was more likely to be true.  What’s more, this interesting phenomenon was more likely to occur in people with right-leaning views than those with left-leaning views.

Shifting perceptions

The volunteers were shown a range of news stories that were associated with both the New York Times and Fox News.  Interestingly, the source of the story didn’t seem to affect trust levels, regardless of the political orientation of the volunteer.

“The results are pretty clear: It’s not about people believing the Times vs. Fox News; it’s about whether the claim in the headline agrees with their view of the world,” the authors say.

The participants were recruited to be as diverse as possible, with an even split between those with left and right-leaning political views.  Each was shown a couple of political headlines with a Democratic leaning, and a couple with more Republican leaning news.  They were also shown a dozen headlines that were randomly chosen and not part of the experiment.

All of the headlines given to the volunteers were from real stories, but the catch was that none actually came from the New York Times or Fox News.  The volunteers had 15 seconds to rate each of the headlines either true or false, with it impossible to plug any of the headlines into a search engine to check their validity.  Each volunteer earned $1 for 5 minutes work.

To add further incentive, half of the volunteers were offered a bonus of $1.60 if they got at least 12 of the 16 questions correct.  The team believe that their finding that people can be induced into putting more effort into their news gathering by small financial incentives could encourage news aggregators to balance news feeds by content rather than by news outlet, whilst social media sites could incentivize users to only share stories they personally trust.

“We’re living in an age of misinformation, where it’s very hard for people to distinguish between established and trustworthy and credible news organizations,” the authors conclude. “Understanding how people make decisions in online news when it comes to the stories they read and how the react to them is important, so that we can design information systems and presentation systems that support trustworthy sources above others.”