5 ms·

Who falls for fake news? Psychological and clinical profiling evidence

33 points by jruohonen 3y ago

jruohonen 3y ago
I am not sure whether this is a good idea: "In this paper the authors analyzed the symptomatic differences observed between two groups: (1) people who effectively discriminated online fake news, and (2) people who ineffectively discriminated online fake news. The symptomatic differences were based on four personality disorders, symptoms that characterize psychotic spectrum disorders (PSD), anxiety, and addiction disorders. The main objective of the study was to find out whether symptom levels of the disorders analyzed increased or decreased as a function of the individual's ability to detect fake news online." Maybe they should be profiling the purveyors of disinformation, the propagandists, instead. In fact, they explicitly take the role of a propagandist themselves in this piece, supplying the participants with information they've concluded to be false. Besides, a lot of questionable assumptions and papers cited. Given the situation during the pandemic, the approach is completely bogus to begin with: "The COVID-19 fake news test consists of 18 statements about coronavirus; 6 false (fake news), 6 true, and 6 indeterminate (i.e., due to lack of evidence, it was not possible to establish content veracity). To ensure validity, statements were worded according to the World Health Organization (2020) guidelines for identifying true and false news. After reading each statement, participants indicated whether content was true (“YES”), false (“NO”), or whether they were uncertain (“?”). For each correct response a point was awarded, other answers received no points (errors were not penalised). Correspondingly, total scores ranged from 0 to 18 points." "The duration of the sample collection was 7 months (from March to September 2021)." Now, at minimum, they should disclose what were the true and false statements in 2021. In other words, the "correct" answer during that time would have probably been "uncertain" (?) to all items asked.
- junofan 3y ago
  I believe the 18 questions are here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178120332893?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517812... I think some of correct answers are definitely wrong.
  - jruohonen 3y ago
    I am not an expert in COVID-19, but, yes, I think in 2021 everything was uncertain to everyone, including scientists, physicians, and political leaders alike.
    - jruohonen 3y ago
      So I checked the paper linked. I thought it dealt with questions about face masks, quarantines, and such, but instead there were some silly things like "coronaviruses can spread more quickly through electromagnetic fields". Nevertheless, to my limited understanding, I think this is questionable because it tends to indicate an absolute answer instead of a probability: "Coronaviruses can be deadly at any age." I think this also turned out to be false according to the latest in media, if I recall correctly: "Coronavirus can be prevented through vaccination." Someone also linked a paper on these "stimulant substances", but I have no idea about that. And as said, you have to reflect all this during the uncertainty in the middle of the pandemic in 2021.
WalterBright 3y ago
> Who falls for fake news? Pretty much everyone.
- ororroro 3y ago
  Everyone falls for it some of the time. Some people fall for it all of the time.
  - Smoosh 3y ago
    And some people, especially those in the latter category, trust and boost those sources, making the problem worse.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  "marketing works, even if you know how marketing works" difference is how much, and if it's edge cases vs. full-on rube
Daub 3y ago
From the article: > Pseudoscientific beliefs are frequently irrational (e.g., believing in the existence of the Loch Ness monster) Not so long ago the belief that rocks can fall from the sky was regarded as irrational and magical. Then meteorites were theorized, observed and predicted. In short, one should reserve a degree of skepticism for skepticism.
- defrost 3y ago
  > Not so long ago the belief that rocks can fall from the sky was regarded as irrational and magical. When was this and which people, specifically, did so? Everywhere you travel, it seems, there are old stories about sky iron - Tibetian Thokcha and other names elsewhere. But who were the people who regarded such stories as irrational and magical. How widespread was that belief?
  - anm89 3y ago
    You are just encouraging fake news. Please don't ask people to substantiate anecdotes. It's better to just accept the narrative if it fits the consensus. This obsession with "proof" and "data" is anti scientific.
  - nitwit005 3y ago
    Appears in the bible, so I suspect you'd have gotten in trouble for mocking the idea too loudly: > And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. Joshua 10:11
    - defrost 3y ago
      It's hard to not believe in meteorites when your environment is desert or snowfields .. micro meteorites are a steady infall and people with sharp eye notice small black rocks appearing on previously clean sand and snow. ( If your routinely clean your gutters and pick through the silt with a strong magnet you'll likely find micro meteorites sooner or later )
anm89 3y ago
Imagine being simple enough to buy this narrative wholesale. There's one objectively correct version of understanding the world and the important idea is to camp people into binary groups of "believes correct news" or "believes fake news"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- RajT88 3y ago
  There are entire news organizations which pump nothing but "Fake News". It's easy to run a study on their followers. Now - it's never been possible to have a news organization which specializes in "100% not fake news", because every organization is going to have some slant or bias. For organizations which really with the best intentions try to present the absolute truth, you're never going to convince everyone you're not "fake news", on account of there not being such a thing as 100% objective reality. All observers are flawed.
kazinator 3y ago
The thing is, there can be bad reasons not to fall for fake news. Someone whose attitude is "I don't effin' believe a goddamned thing I read anywhere" doesn't fall for fake news. Unfortunately, they don't believe real news either. True Scotsman's "doesn't fall for fake news" is more of a matter of intellect, than psychology. It goes with personality to the extent that stupid is a personality.
awerlawejj 3y ago
My mother and my grandmother, that's whom. Realistically, they believe whatever they want to believe in spite of any evidence or lack thereof. If they don't like what the news media says, then it's all a conspiracy of lies, nothing in the news is true. If they like what the news media says, then "they wouldn't be allowed to say it on TV if it weren't true". I have given up on them both.
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  I call this the Limbaugh Syndrome. He’d rant for hours about how you can’t believe anything the MSM says. Then the next day he’d spend the show gleefully talking about an article in the NYT that validated something about Hillary or some Republican trope. Cognitive Dissonance has to be genetic.
mjevans 3y ago
The chart in Section 3 "Mean transformed scores out of 10 were graphically depicted in Fig. 1 for each type of group." And the decoder ring of text beneath it are enlightening... "Trait Anxiety, State Anxiety, Negative Affect, Histrionism, Schizotypy, Paranoia, Narcissism, Simulations (Barnum Effect), Suggestibility and Search for emotions." 5. Conclusions recommend different approaches for several sub-groups, including "reinterpreting sensationalism in the media and promoting critical thinking in social network users."
roamerz 3y ago
>Who falls for fake news? Probably the same people that fall for email scams / phishing.
jszymborski 3y ago
IMHO this obsession over fake news sort of misses the point. People are hurting, and they don't have strong communities to support them. Instead, folks who are hurting are huddling together online and perpetuating ill-adaptations. Add to that grifters that are trying to take advantage and you've got heart-rendering pandemic of paranoia that are ripping families apart and destroying lives. People don't realize how much being part of an amateur soccer league or ham radio club or just any community increases our resilience as a society.
- makeitshine 3y ago
  And if you can't find community, create one. Start a club and people will join. It might seem silly, but if you're doing something, get others to join. Lots of people are looking for something, anything, to feel connected.
- finite_depth 3y ago
  [dead]
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  >People are hurting, and they don't have strong communities to support them. Strangely your comment holds true in areas where community means you get many different perspectives. In my experience (growing up in the south), it's "strong-knit" communities that are doing the most harm in perpetuating mistaken beliefs or amplifying anger. What's especially weird is that this holds true when some communities' economic status is considerably better than the majority of the country! There's a momentum behind beliefs that get culturally amplified. And it's hard to disagree with people when you don't have immediate examples to compare and contrast. Or worse, when your very livelihood gets threatened for going against the flow. My own experience (given the above) is why I'm eternally grateful for the unfiltered internet I had when I was growing up. I wouldn't be half the person I am today without the many varied perspectives that I had access to per-social media bubbles.
  - JieJie 3y ago
    I love that you've pointed out a way that having a community can be harmful as well. One can have a community that isn't supportive, and that can be harmful. As you point out, you're grateful you were able to have access to other communities that helped you in life. One can have a supportive community that is supporting something that might be harmful, as well. I got out of the community that raised me quick as lightning. They were decent, good-hearted people; they just had different ideas what they were willing to accept out of members of their community. It's very much a Goldilocks problem. Everyone needs to find the community that's "just right", and that's hard. Even with the internet, because it's so easy to find the harmful but supportive communities.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
anonymousiam 3y ago
Who decides which news is fake? A few days ago I read this reputable study that says HCQ reduces CoViD-19 mortality to 1/6 vs. no HCQ. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297523001075 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S205229752...) Just a few years ago, the media was in a frenzy of "fact checking" discrediting doctors and people (including the President Of The United States) who were taking HCQ as treatment for CoViD-19. The same frenzy of "fact checking" occurred for stories about the point of origin for the virus. People and scientists were ridiculed and mocked for claiming it may have come from a lab in China, which is now the best theory. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/18498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/18498/ The paper cites lots of obviously fake news, but the two (contemporaneously significant and true) stories I cited above were credible, and some group or groups seemed to not want them circulated. THAT is the conspiracy theory that should be investigated. Was it just an honest mistake, or was there something more sinister, such as collusion between NIH and pharmaceutical companies? Here's another conspiracy theory; perhaps the purpose of this paper to discourage people from sharing controversial news items and just believe what the government/media tells them, regardless of legitimate doubt? Here's a link to a recent HN post about skepticism in science, which used to be considered a good and normal thing. I wonder if Carl Sagan were still alive today, whether he might be labeled as "climate skeptic", or heretic by those in "authority." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060912
chmod600 3y ago
If I were pursuing this line of inquiry, I'd use a variety of questions to understand biases in both directions on a number of topics. For instance, when Covid was at maximum political polarization, you had some people partying like it's nothing and other people convinced that the Covid mortality rate was 20%. Both groups may have been swayed by fake news, but with different directionality. You also need to provide similar sets of facts in different contexts. E.g. news that came from a friend vs a three-letter agency vs podcast vs CNN vs Fox News. As presented in the article, the study just seems to be a conformity test.
doodlebugging 3y ago
Who proofreads these journal articles? In their conclusions, #3 finishes with a sentence that sure looks like someone accidentally a word or phrase. >(3) Individuals who do not effectively detect fake news tend to have higher levels of anxiety, both state and trait anxiety. These individuals are also highly suggestible and tend to seek strong emotions. Profiles of this type may inappropriately employ intuitive thinking, which could be the psychological mechanism that.
wsc981 3y ago
A lot of people fall for fake news, as long as the source seems authorative, at least that is what recent history teached me. Do we still remember the weapons of mass destruction from Iraq [0]? Assad being accused of the Douma gas attack [1]. Stating vaccines are safe & effective while the contracts received by governments stated that both effectiveness and long-term safety of vaccines was not known [2]? Or the claim that the Hunter Biden laptop leak was Russian disinformation [3]? In this day and age, we really have to question everything - sadly. Seems all major news sources are compromised by governments or intelligence agencies in order to push their agendas. --- [0]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/1151160567/colin-powell-iraq-un-weapons-mass-destruction https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/1151160567/colin-powell-iraq-... [1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/16/chem-d16.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/16/chem-d16.html [2]: https://archive.org/details/contract_03/page/48/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/contract_03/page/48/mode/2up (page 49) [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-hunter-biden-laptop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-h...
- aurareturn 3y ago
  >Seems all major news sources are compromised by governments or intelligence agencies in order to push their agendas. The China in the western news and the China I know in real life are completely different. In the news, China is always framed as evil - always up to no good. In real life, it's just a freaking country where life is peaceful, stable, things are improving, people are getting wealthier, society is improving. Also, most Americans believe that China has the same anti-American propaganda in Chinese society. This is wrong. Most normal Chinese people I've met over the last 2-3 years don't have the same "hate" for Americans as Americans have for the Chinese. Chinese people understand that it's just political, two countries fighting for resources. It's not very personal to them. However, Americans have a real "hate" for the Chinese through relentless anti-China propaganda in the news and Americans see it as much more personal based on my experience. Americans just assume that the Chinese hate them as much as they hate the Chinese because of how much anti-China is in the media. Therefore, they believe that the Chinese must have the same or higher levels of anti-American in their media. Propaganda is powerful. Don't ever tell me America has free press. It doesn't. Not on the national scale.
orange_fritter 3y ago
Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point. Fake news rewards a belief choice that healthy people indulge in every day. While not wanting to get too into a religious debate, I think that religion teaches us that belief does not require evidence, but reward. I saw a video of someone making an elaborate orange juice for church. Price of admission- if you want that orange juice and spend time with 100 friendly people, is that you have to assent to a belief system. This effectively teaches individuals that, if an organization can create an "Atmosphere of Plausibility" or "Illusion of Consensus", then the individual has permission to enter the tribe by accepting a belief. From there, an "us versus the world" bond is established, and outside groups/nonbelievers who want to "destroy the bond" or "destroy the group" are considered hostile. This relates to fake news because we are trained that a belief requires minimal evidence as long as the social opportunities it affords are substantial. In fact, the greater the leap of defiance against evidence, demonization of "experts", etc, the more that a tribal bond is reinforced. Since I've already crossed a line by discussing religion, I'll refrain from addressing politics aside from saying that this theory of "Belief Bonding" seems to fit with some paradoxes in American Politics quite well. edit - clarity
- jruohonen 3y ago
  > Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point. Exactly. Besides, it is unethical, unscientific, and dangerous; i.e., you'll end up labeling large masses of people as insane because disinformation and misinformation are merely new terms for propaganda, which is public relations, which is marketing and advertising, and so on and so forth. Maybe they, the authors, the arbiters of truth, would allow me to test their sanity by asking them questions about my field? Or maybe they'd like to also classify people's sanity based on things like who buys some unneeded garbage prompted by online advertisements? Or based on who votes whom?
  - orange_fritter 3y ago
    I think it also reinforces the basic fake news premise that experts are propagandists.
YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
This pairs well a paper comes from the Dunedin longitudinal study, which has been following ~1000 people who were born in 1972/1972 in one area of New Zealand: "Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance" [0] The paper includes the interesting finding that vaccine resistant/hesitant and vaccine acceptant individuals had very different (not to mention statistically significant) personality profiles at 18 years of age. From the abstract: "Vaccine-resistant and vaccine-hesitant participants had histories of adverse childhood experiences that foster mistrust, longstanding mental-health problems that foster misinterpretation of messaging, and early-emerging personality traits including tendencies toward extreme negative emotions, shutting down mentally under stress, nonconformism, and fatalism about health. Many vaccine-resistant and -hesitant participants had cognitive difficulties in comprehending health information. Findings held after control for socioeconomic origins. Vaccine intentions are not short-term isolated misunderstandings. They are part of a person's style of interpreting information and making decisions that is laid down before secondary school age. Findings suggest ways to tailor vaccine messaging for hesitant and resistant groups." [0] https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/2/pgac034/6553423 https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/2/pgac034/65534...
renegat0x0 3y ago
Not so long time ago "critical thinking" was disapproved during covid era.
simonblack 3y ago
People fall for fake news when they get their news from very few or only one source. The more and varied sources for news that are used, the less likelihood of people falling for fake news. If you look at US-based news sources only, you will receive only US-biased news. If you look at Chinese-based news sources only, you will receive only Chinese-biased news. The same thing applies for news sources from Europe, Africa, Middle-East, Russia and India. By sourcing news from world-wide sources, you will get a much broader set of news stories. Many of those stories will cancel out most biases, leaving a kernel of information that is more unbiased than not. However, most people refuse to look for views that might differ from their own.

33 points by jruohonen 3y ago

I am not sure whether this is a good idea: "In this paper the authors analyzed the symptomatic differences observed between two groups: (1) people who effectively discriminated online fake news, and (2) people who ineffectively discriminated online fake news. The symptomatic differences were based on four personality disorders, symptoms that characterize psychotic spectrum disorders (PSD), anxiety, and addiction disorders. The main objective of the study was to find out whether symptom levels of the disorders analyzed increased or decreased as a function of the individual's ability to detect fake news online." Maybe they should be profiling the purveyors of disinformation, the propagandists, instead. In fact, they explicitly take the role of a propagandist themselves in this piece, supplying the participants with information they've concluded to be false. Besides, a lot of questionable assumptions and papers cited. Given the situation during the pandemic, the approach is completely bogus to begin with: "The COVID-19 fake news test consists of 18 statements about coronavirus; 6 false (fake news), 6 true, and 6 indeterminate (i.e., due to lack of evidence, it was not possible to establish content veracity). To ensure validity, statements were worded according to the World Health Organization (2020) guidelines for identifying true and false news. After reading each statement, participants indicated whether content was true (“YES”), false (“NO”), or whether they were uncertain (“?”). For each correct response a point was awarded, other answers received no points (errors were not penalised). Correspondingly, total scores ranged from 0 to 18 points." "The duration of the sample collection was 7 months (from March to September 2021)." Now, at minimum, they should disclose what were the true and false statements in 2021. In other words, the "correct" answer during that time would have probably been "uncertain" (?) to all items asked.

junofan 3y ago
I believe the 18 questions are here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178120332893?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016517812... I think some of correct answers are definitely wrong.
- jruohonen 3y ago
  I am not an expert in COVID-19, but, yes, I think in 2021 everything was uncertain to everyone, including scientists, physicians, and political leaders alike.
  - jruohonen 3y ago
    So I checked the paper linked. I thought it dealt with questions about face masks, quarantines, and such, but instead there were some silly things like "coronaviruses can spread more quickly through electromagnetic fields". Nevertheless, to my limited understanding, I think this is questionable because it tends to indicate an absolute answer instead of a probability: "Coronaviruses can be deadly at any age." I think this also turned out to be false according to the latest in media, if I recall correctly: "Coronavirus can be prevented through vaccination." Someone also linked a paper on these "stimulant substances", but I have no idea about that. And as said, you have to reflect all this during the uncertainty in the middle of the pandemic in 2021.

WalterBright 3y ago

> Who falls for fake news? Pretty much everyone.

ororroro 3y ago
Everyone falls for it some of the time. Some people fall for it all of the time.
- Smoosh 3y ago
  And some people, especially those in the latter category, trust and boost those sources, making the problem worse.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
"marketing works, even if you know how marketing works" difference is how much, and if it's edge cases vs. full-on rube

Daub 3y ago

From the article: > Pseudoscientific beliefs are frequently irrational (e.g., believing in the existence of the Loch Ness monster) Not so long ago the belief that rocks can fall from the sky was regarded as irrational and magical. Then meteorites were theorized, observed and predicted. In short, one should reserve a degree of skepticism for skepticism.

defrost 3y ago
> Not so long ago the belief that rocks can fall from the sky was regarded as irrational and magical. When was this and which people, specifically, did so? Everywhere you travel, it seems, there are old stories about sky iron - Tibetian Thokcha and other names elsewhere. But who were the people who regarded such stories as irrational and magical. How widespread was that belief?
- anm89 3y ago
  You are just encouraging fake news. Please don't ask people to substantiate anecdotes. It's better to just accept the narrative if it fits the consensus. This obsession with "proof" and "data" is anti scientific.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  Appears in the bible, so I suspect you'd have gotten in trouble for mocking the idea too loudly: > And it came to pass, as they fled from before Israel, and were in the going down to Bethhoron, that the LORD cast down great stones from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword. Joshua 10:11
  - defrost 3y ago
    It's hard to not believe in meteorites when your environment is desert or snowfields .. micro meteorites are a steady infall and people with sharp eye notice small black rocks appearing on previously clean sand and snow. ( If your routinely clean your gutters and pick through the silt with a strong magnet you'll likely find micro meteorites sooner or later )

anm89 3y ago

Imagine being simple enough to buy this narrative wholesale. There's one objectively correct version of understanding the world and the important idea is to camp people into binary groups of "believes correct news" or "believes fake news"

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
RajT88 3y ago
There are entire news organizations which pump nothing but "Fake News". It's easy to run a study on their followers. Now - it's never been possible to have a news organization which specializes in "100% not fake news", because every organization is going to have some slant or bias. For organizations which really with the best intentions try to present the absolute truth, you're never going to convince everyone you're not "fake news", on account of there not being such a thing as 100% objective reality. All observers are flawed.

kazinator 3y ago

The thing is, there can be bad reasons not to fall for fake news. Someone whose attitude is "I don't effin' believe a goddamned thing I read anywhere" doesn't fall for fake news. Unfortunately, they don't believe real news either. True Scotsman's "doesn't fall for fake news" is more of a matter of intellect, than psychology. It goes with personality to the extent that stupid is a personality.

awerlawejj 3y ago

My mother and my grandmother, that's whom. Realistically, they believe whatever they want to believe in spite of any evidence or lack thereof. If they don't like what the news media says, then it's all a conspiracy of lies, nothing in the news is true. If they like what the news media says, then "they wouldn't be allowed to say it on TV if it weren't true". I have given up on them both.

hindsightbias 3y ago
I call this the Limbaugh Syndrome. He’d rant for hours about how you can’t believe anything the MSM says. Then the next day he’d spend the show gleefully talking about an article in the NYT that validated something about Hillary or some Republican trope. Cognitive Dissonance has to be genetic.

mjevans 3y ago

The chart in Section 3 "Mean transformed scores out of 10 were graphically depicted in Fig. 1 for each type of group." And the decoder ring of text beneath it are enlightening... "Trait Anxiety, State Anxiety, Negative Affect, Histrionism, Schizotypy, Paranoia, Narcissism, Simulations (Barnum Effect), Suggestibility and Search for emotions." 5. Conclusions recommend different approaches for several sub-groups, including "reinterpreting sensationalism in the media and promoting critical thinking in social network users."

roamerz 3y ago

>Who falls for fake news? Probably the same people that fall for email scams / phishing.

jszymborski 3y ago

IMHO this obsession over fake news sort of misses the point. People are hurting, and they don't have strong communities to support them. Instead, folks who are hurting are huddling together online and perpetuating ill-adaptations. Add to that grifters that are trying to take advantage and you've got heart-rendering pandemic of paranoia that are ripping families apart and destroying lives. People don't realize how much being part of an amateur soccer league or ham radio club or just any community increases our resilience as a society.

makeitshine 3y ago
And if you can't find community, create one. Start a club and people will join. It might seem silly, but if you're doing something, get others to join. Lots of people are looking for something, anything, to feel connected.
finite_depth 3y ago
[dead]
whoknowsidont 3y ago
>People are hurting, and they don't have strong communities to support them. Strangely your comment holds true in areas where community means you get many different perspectives. In my experience (growing up in the south), it's "strong-knit" communities that are doing the most harm in perpetuating mistaken beliefs or amplifying anger. What's especially weird is that this holds true when some communities' economic status is considerably better than the majority of the country! There's a momentum behind beliefs that get culturally amplified. And it's hard to disagree with people when you don't have immediate examples to compare and contrast. Or worse, when your very livelihood gets threatened for going against the flow. My own experience (given the above) is why I'm eternally grateful for the unfiltered internet I had when I was growing up. I wouldn't be half the person I am today without the many varied perspectives that I had access to per-social media bubbles.
- JieJie 3y ago
  I love that you've pointed out a way that having a community can be harmful as well. One can have a community that isn't supportive, and that can be harmful. As you point out, you're grateful you were able to have access to other communities that helped you in life. One can have a supportive community that is supporting something that might be harmful, as well. I got out of the community that raised me quick as lightning. They were decent, good-hearted people; they just had different ideas what they were willing to accept out of members of their community. It's very much a Goldilocks problem. Everyone needs to find the community that's "just right", and that's hard. Even with the internet, because it's so easy to find the harmful but supportive communities.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

anonymousiam 3y ago

Who decides which news is fake? A few days ago I read this reputable study that says HCQ reduces CoViD-19 mortality to 1/6 vs. no HCQ. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2052297523001075 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S205229752...) Just a few years ago, the media was in a frenzy of "fact checking" discrediting doctors and people (including the President Of The United States) who were taking HCQ as treatment for CoViD-19. The same frenzy of "fact checking" occurred for stories about the point of origin for the virus. People and scientists were ridiculed and mocked for claiming it may have come from a lab in China, which is now the best theory. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/18498/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/18498/ The paper cites lots of obviously fake news, but the two (contemporaneously significant and true) stories I cited above were credible, and some group or groups seemed to not want them circulated. THAT is the conspiracy theory that should be investigated. Was it just an honest mistake, or was there something more sinister, such as collusion between NIH and pharmaceutical companies? Here's another conspiracy theory; perhaps the purpose of this paper to discourage people from sharing controversial news items and just believe what the government/media tells them, regardless of legitimate doubt? Here's a link to a recent HN post about skepticism in science, which used to be considered a good and normal thing. I wonder if Carl Sagan were still alive today, whether he might be labeled as "climate skeptic", or heretic by those in "authority." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38060912

chmod600 3y ago

If I were pursuing this line of inquiry, I'd use a variety of questions to understand biases in both directions on a number of topics. For instance, when Covid was at maximum political polarization, you had some people partying like it's nothing and other people convinced that the Covid mortality rate was 20%. Both groups may have been swayed by fake news, but with different directionality. You also need to provide similar sets of facts in different contexts. E.g. news that came from a friend vs a three-letter agency vs podcast vs CNN vs Fox News. As presented in the article, the study just seems to be a conformity test.

doodlebugging 3y ago

Who proofreads these journal articles? In their conclusions, #3 finishes with a sentence that sure looks like someone accidentally a word or phrase. >(3) Individuals who do not effectively detect fake news tend to have higher levels of anxiety, both state and trait anxiety. These individuals are also highly suggestible and tend to seek strong emotions. Profiles of this type may inappropriately employ intuitive thinking, which could be the psychological mechanism that.

wsc981 3y ago

A lot of people fall for fake news, as long as the source seems authorative, at least that is what recent history teached me. Do we still remember the weapons of mass destruction from Iraq [0]? Assad being accused of the Douma gas attack [1]. Stating vaccines are safe & effective while the contracts received by governments stated that both effectiveness and long-term safety of vaccines was not known [2]? Or the claim that the Hunter Biden laptop leak was Russian disinformation [3]? In this day and age, we really have to question everything - sadly. Seems all major news sources are compromised by governments or intelligence agencies in order to push their agendas. --- [0]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/1151160567/colin-powell-iraq-un-weapons-mass-destruction https://www.npr.org/2023/02/03/1151160567/colin-powell-iraq-... [1]: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/16/chem-d16.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/12/16/chem-d16.html [2]: https://archive.org/details/contract_03/page/48/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/contract_03/page/48/mode/2up (page 49) [3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-hunter-biden-laptop.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/16/us/politics/republicans-h...

aurareturn 3y ago
>Seems all major news sources are compromised by governments or intelligence agencies in order to push their agendas. The China in the western news and the China I know in real life are completely different. In the news, China is always framed as evil - always up to no good. In real life, it's just a freaking country where life is peaceful, stable, things are improving, people are getting wealthier, society is improving. Also, most Americans believe that China has the same anti-American propaganda in Chinese society. This is wrong. Most normal Chinese people I've met over the last 2-3 years don't have the same "hate" for Americans as Americans have for the Chinese. Chinese people understand that it's just political, two countries fighting for resources. It's not very personal to them. However, Americans have a real "hate" for the Chinese through relentless anti-China propaganda in the news and Americans see it as much more personal based on my experience. Americans just assume that the Chinese hate them as much as they hate the Chinese because of how much anti-China is in the media. Therefore, they believe that the Chinese must have the same or higher levels of anti-American in their media. Propaganda is powerful. Don't ever tell me America has free press. It doesn't. Not on the national scale.

orange_fritter 3y ago

Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point. Fake news rewards a belief choice that healthy people indulge in every day. While not wanting to get too into a religious debate, I think that religion teaches us that belief does not require evidence, but reward. I saw a video of someone making an elaborate orange juice for church. Price of admission- if you want that orange juice and spend time with 100 friendly people, is that you have to assent to a belief system. This effectively teaches individuals that, if an organization can create an "Atmosphere of Plausibility" or "Illusion of Consensus", then the individual has permission to enter the tribe by accepting a belief. From there, an "us versus the world" bond is established, and outside groups/nonbelievers who want to "destroy the bond" or "destroy the group" are considered hostile. This relates to fake news because we are trained that a belief requires minimal evidence as long as the social opportunities it affords are substantial. In fact, the greater the leap of defiance against evidence, demonization of "experts", etc, the more that a tribal bond is reinforced. Since I've already crossed a line by discussing religion, I'll refrain from addressing politics aside from saying that this theory of "Belief Bonding" seems to fit with some paradoxes in American Politics quite well. edit - clarity

jruohonen 3y ago
> Not that the authors were necessarily doing this, but I think that simply attempting to associate misinformation vulnerability with mental illness really misses the whole point. Exactly. Besides, it is unethical, unscientific, and dangerous; i.e., you'll end up labeling large masses of people as insane because disinformation and misinformation are merely new terms for propaganda, which is public relations, which is marketing and advertising, and so on and so forth. Maybe they, the authors, the arbiters of truth, would allow me to test their sanity by asking them questions about my field? Or maybe they'd like to also classify people's sanity based on things like who buys some unneeded garbage prompted by online advertisements? Or based on who votes whom?
- orange_fritter 3y ago
  I think it also reinforces the basic fake news premise that experts are propagandists.

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago

This pairs well a paper comes from the Dunedin longitudinal study, which has been following ~1000 people who were born in 1972/1972 in one area of New Zealand: "Deep-seated psychological histories of COVID-19 vaccine hesitance and resistance" [0] The paper includes the interesting finding that vaccine resistant/hesitant and vaccine acceptant individuals had very different (not to mention statistically significant) personality profiles at 18 years of age. From the abstract: "Vaccine-resistant and vaccine-hesitant participants had histories of adverse childhood experiences that foster mistrust, longstanding mental-health problems that foster misinterpretation of messaging, and early-emerging personality traits including tendencies toward extreme negative emotions, shutting down mentally under stress, nonconformism, and fatalism about health. Many vaccine-resistant and -hesitant participants had cognitive difficulties in comprehending health information. Findings held after control for socioeconomic origins. Vaccine intentions are not short-term isolated misunderstandings. They are part of a person's style of interpreting information and making decisions that is laid down before secondary school age. Findings suggest ways to tailor vaccine messaging for hesitant and resistant groups." [0] https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/2/pgac034/6553423 https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/2/pgac034/65534...

renegat0x0 3y ago

Not so long time ago "critical thinking" was disapproved during covid era.

simonblack 3y ago

People fall for fake news when they get their news from very few or only one source. The more and varied sources for news that are used, the less likelihood of people falling for fake news. If you look at US-based news sources only, you will receive only US-biased news. If you look at Chinese-based news sources only, you will receive only Chinese-biased news. The same thing applies for news sources from Europe, Africa, Middle-East, Russia and India. By sourcing news from world-wide sources, you will get a much broader set of news stories. Many of those stories will cancel out most biases, leaving a kernel of information that is more unbiased than not. However, most people refuse to look for views that might differ from their own.