reply on: People Will Share Misinformation That Sparks “Moral Outrage” \ stacker news ~science

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33 sats \ 0 replies \ @SimpleStacker 2 Dec \ on: People Will Share Misinformation That Sparks “Moral Outrage” science

Here's the actual money quote, for discerning readers:

Brady’s team designed two behavioral experiments where 1,475 people were presented with a selection of fact-checked news stories curated to contain outrageous and not outrageous content; they were also given reliable news and misinformation. In both experiments, the participants were asked to rate how outrageous the headlines were.

The second task was different, though. In the first experiment, people were simply asked to rate how likely they were to share a headline, while in the second they were asked to determine if the headline was true or not.

It turned out that most people could discern between true and fake news. Yet they were willing to share outrageous news regardless of whether it was true or not—a result that was in line with previous findings from Facebook and Twitter data. Many participants were perfectly OK with sharing outrageous headlines, even though they were fully aware those headlines were misinformation. (emphasis added)

I think last sentence is a stretch by the journalist. If I'm reading the experiment correctly, the two experimental groups involved different subjects. So it's not quite accurate to say that people shared headlines they knew to be untrue.

Instead, what this experiment tells me is that when asked to think critically, people can discern between fake and true headlines. But outrageous headlines make it less likely that we would approach an article with discernment, and simply react to it instead.