On Pandemics, Politics, and Personality: The Role of Integrity and Political Ideology in the Sharing of False News.

Lawson, MA, and Kacker, H. (2021). On pandemics, politics, and personality: the role of integrity and political ideology in the sharing of false news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge 0001120

Commentary

The continued sharing of false information can sometimes evoke devastating events.

Studies of political contexts have shown that the sharing of false news is usually positively associated with conservative political ideologies. However, generalizing this may increase the rampant political polarization.

The researchers proposed that false news sharing is driven by conservatives with low integrity. In eight studies with 4,642 participants and 91,144 unique participant news observations, we tested the hypothesis in the context of COVID-19, politics, and neutral news.

The findings show the inadequacy of fact-checker interventions to stop the spread of false news and highlight the challenges associated with tackling false news, especially during crises such as COVID-19 where misinformation undermines the government's ability to reduce the pandemic.