Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased
Ceylan, Anderson and Wood report four studies with 2,476 participants in total, each of whom chose whether to share 16 simulated headlines. Habit strength was measured by self-reported automaticity of sharing and past sharing frequency. Stronger habits went with sharing more headlines overall, and with less discrimination between true and false headlines, and habitual sharers remained insensitive even when asked to judge accuracy first. The 15 per cent of participants with the strongest habits accounted for roughly 30 to 40 per cent of the false headlines shared, depending on how habit was measured. In the fourth study, participants trained with rewards for sharing accurate news became better at sharing true over false headlines, and the change carried over to later sessions without rewards; training that rewarded sharing misinformation reduced discernment, and accuracy training slightly raised the overall rate of sharing. The authors explain the results through reward learning and conclude that the sharing structure of social media matters more than individual reasoning or bias.
Ceylan, Anderson and Wood report four studies with 2,476 participants in total, each of whom chose whether to share 16 simulated headlines. Habit strength was measured by self-reported automaticity of sharing and past sharing frequency. Stronger habits went with sharing more headlines overall, and with less discrimination between true and false headlines, and habitual sharers remained insensitive even when asked to judge accuracy first. The 15 per cent of participants with the strongest habits accounted for roughly 30 to 40 per cent of the false headlines shared, depending on how habit was measured. In the fourth study, participants trained with rewards for sharing accurate news became better at sharing true over false headlines, and the change carried over to later sessions without rewards; training that rewarded sharing misinformation reduced discernment, and accuracy training slightly raised the overall rate of sharing. The authors explain the results through reward learning and conclude that the sharing structure of social media matters more than individual reasoning or bias.
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Ceylan, G., Anderson, I. A., & Wood, W. (2023). Sharing of misinformation is habitual, not just lazy or biased. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(4), e2216614120. doi:10.1073/pnas.2216614120 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2216614120