Social Authoritarians Most Likely To Believe Fake News

Fake news has become a common claim, and for good reason. The Russians, for example, have been caught using environmentalists, food activists, "journalism" professors, and trade groups to promote fear and doubt about American science and technology.But organic food shoppers and people scared of natural gas are not alone in believing fake news. A new study shows that dogmatic individuals, fundamentalists and delusional people of all kinds are more likely to believe fake news. The less open-minded a person is, the more likely they are to be swayed by fake news claims.

Fake news has become a common claim, and for good reason. The Russians, for example, have been caught using environmentalists, food activists, "journalism" professors, and trade groups to promote fear and doubt about American science and technology
.
But organic food shoppers and people scared of natural gas are not alone in believing fake news. A new study shows that dogmatic individuals, fundamentalists and delusional people of all kinds are more likely to believe fake news. The less open-minded a person is, the more likely they are to be swayed by fake news claims.

To find answers to why some are more prone to believing fake news, the study used two experiments with 948 participants. Twelve real and 12 fake headlines were presented randomly. The subjects were asked to their confidence in whether they believed the headlines actually happened.

Those with less propensity toward analytical thinking and higher scores on dogmatism, like social authoritarians on both ends of the political spectrum, were more likely to believe fake news headlines.

Citation: Michael V.Bronstein, GordonPennycook, AdamBear, David G.Rand, Tyrone D.Cannon, Belief in Fake News is Associated with Delusionality, Dogmatism, Religious Fundamentalism, and Reduced Analytic Thinking, Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 24 October 2018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2018.09.005

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