The Psychology of Fake News
- showmethereality
- Jan 4, 2021
- 2 min read
The language of fake news
Psycholinguistics can help detect false information. A study at the University of Washington compared the language used in real news, satire, counterfeiting and propaganda. They have found that words used for exaggeration, such as subjective, superlatives, and modal adverbs, are used more in fake news. In contrast, real news contains more words and phrases, uses specific number, and comparative data.
Researchers have also found that first- and second-person pronouns are less used in fake news, while trusted news tends to avoid language that seems too personal. False news usually uses more obscure terms or words (e.g. a little, maybe, apparently, sort of). The body of these type of news is short and repetitive, less informative, yet the title is long and sensational.
The psychology behind fake news based on a study by Adam Waytz
Adam Waytz, an associate professor of management and organizations at the Kellogg School, has been occupied with studying the psychology of fake news. In his view, in order to understand how different members in a family or how distinct country’s population perceive reality, it is important for social media to not to be taken into account and more so focus on social psychology.
To understand our tendency to believe false news, Waytz presents 2 psychological concepts. The first one is a well-known concept, the motivated reasoning, the idea that we are motivated to consider the facts, information that confirms our opinion veridical. An example of this is that if we are motivated to believe in negative things about Hillary Clinton, there is also a high probability that we will believe the outrageous news about her. Waytz argues that motivated reasoning can lead to a false social consensus over time.
The other concept that stands behind false news is naive realism. The idea of naïve realism means that we tend to believe that the perception of reality can only be one, concrete view and that people who disagree with it are less informed, or uninformed, and biased.
Waytz says, whatever the source of the news is, the combined effect of motivated reasoning, naïve realism, and social consensus prevents people from drawing objective conclusions.
Fake news and emotions
It is really hard to slow down the spread of fake news. The reasoning behind this is our own emotions. If we cling to something, we become vigilant in such cases and as a result we will most likely remember the news we have read or heard.
Johanna Kaakinen, a psychologist at the University of Turku, examines reactions to hoaxes on a psychological level. According to her research on eye movements, when we read a story that evokes emotional reactions and is relevant to us, we get a kind of tunnel vision. Our attention multiplies, leading us to remember the story and be willing to re-evaluate the information later.
Destroying false news is made even more difficult by the fact that most people have a hard time believing that they can be a victim of online misinformation, revealing the third-person effect. This phenomenon is making us think that others are more vulnerable to the effects of the media than we are ourselves.
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