In this article, I will discuss the psychology of fake news.
Do you believe in fake news?
It can be difficult to tell what is fake and what is true, but as long as it is easy to get information, there are people who believe fake news and are affected in some way.
What kind of people are likely to believe fake news? If you are one of them, please take note of this study.
The study
The study was conducted on 22,706 participants with an average age of 31.13 years.Of the participants, 69.7% were female and 30.3% were male.
The survey received ethical approval from the Internal Review Board of the School of Journalism and Communication, Renmin University of China.
The online survey was conducted via the TencentNews mobile application, as 99.1% of Internet users use their cell phones to access the Internet.
Tencent is one of the largest Internet portals in China.
Participants were initially presented with 10 health-related misinformation.
The selection criteria for the misinformation in this study were based on the messages exposing the misinformation released by TencentNews' Jiaozhen fact-checking platform.
The final misinformation items used in this study were selected based on the popularity, frequency, and topic of the misinformation.
Participants were first asked to indicate whether or not they were aware of this misinformation item.They were then asked if they believed the information.
After being exposed to all ten health misinformation items, they were asked about their health-related anxiety, beliefs about existing misinformation, and demographic information.
As a result, three characteristics of people who are likely to believe misinformation were found.
1) People with health-related anxiety are more likely to believe it.
2) They believe in wrong perceptions and knowledge of health-related information.
3) People who see misinformation over and over again.
These are the characteristics that we found.
Although the study itself had a high percentage of women, the results also showed that women were more likely to believe misinformation.
Explanation
This study found that people with the characteristics mentioned above are more likely to believe in fake news.
The first factor is that people with health-related concerns are more likely to believe in fake news.As an example, there have been fake news stories in the past that people are more likely to develop cancer if they eat microwaved food.
Since negative information tends to resonate with people's emotions, people who have health problems are more likely to believe such information than positive information.
As for false beliefs about vaccines, some people believe that vaccines are poison! It is easy to imagine a person who is convinced that vaccines are poisonous feeling unconditionally bad about vaccines for infectious diseases.
This also includes people who continue to publish conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated opinions, regardless of the facts.
The same is true for the repeated revelations mentioned above, but remember that there were rumors that some food additives were added as a ruse by food manufacturers.There was a time when people said that Cocoa had drug ingredients in it and was highly addictive.
And then there were the times when people said that Co. And so on.
He explained that through repeated exposure to this kind of information, people gradually come to believe it.
Finally, regarding gender differences, the fact that women tend to believe more is proven by statistics, but not explained as to what factors are involved.
However, when comparing income, status, and education with the tendency to believe in fake news, those with higher and lower levels of these factors were more likely to believe in fake news.
One factor is thought to be that people who are considered to be of high social status tend to have higher health literacy and are therefore less likely to believe this kind of misinformation.
Pan W, Liu D, Fang J. An Examination of Factors Contributing to the Acceptance of Online Health Misinformation. Front Psychol. 2021;12:630268. Published 2021 Mar 1. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.630268
Conclusion
The characteristics of people who are likely to believe fake news include
1) People who are concerned about their health
2) People who believe in false information
3) People who are exposed to misinformation over and over again
Being exposed to misinformation repeatedly.
One countermeasure is to increase health literacy, but unfortunately, there are many people who believe in fake news, even medical professionals.
One of the ways to prevent this is to increase health literacy. In order to confirm whether you are being influenced by such information, why don't you look back at the characteristics mentioned above?
Finally, I would like to share with you what I do to prevent fake news.
First, I look for positive and negative opinions on a single topic.
Next, I check the source of the information.
Is it peer-reviewed, for example, a research paper? What is the funding source? What is the research model? Just knowing how to look at these things will allow you to examine the information more closely.
Lastly, ask yourself, "What is my opinion? And finally, ask yourself, "What is my opinion?
That's about it.
