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Misinformation issue: Study indicates one characteristic of Americans most likely to share fake news.
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Whether it’s anti-vaccine messaging or falsehoods about the 2020 election, it’s easy to blame conservatives or Republicans as a group for spreading misinformation, as many in the media and academia have done. But this message is oversimplified, and anyone who wants to fight back against the very real scourge of fake news in American politics should look more closely.
In newly published research, we found that it’s not conservatives in general who tend to promote false information, but rather a smaller subset of them who also share two psychological traits: low levels of conscientiousness and an appetite for chaos. Importantly, we found that several other factors we tested for — including support for former President Donald Trump — did not reliably predict an inclination to share misinformation.
Our findings suggest it is misguided to assign blame for misinformation to the political right broadly — indeed, doing so risks increasing polarization. Instead, it would be more productive for researchers, social media platforms, politicians and members of the media to focus their efforts on low-conscientiousness conservatives (LCCs for short) in particular. Yet, our findings also showed that fact-checking was not an effective way to prevent these conservatives from sharing false news stories, meaning other interventions are needed.
To be clear, existing research has found that conservatives have a greater tendency toward misinformation than liberals do. For example, during the 2016 election, individuals who leaned conservative were more likely to engage with and share disinformation on Twitter and Facebook. Likewise, in the early months of the pandemic, conservatives were more likely to believe Covid-19 was a hoax, and to downplay the virus’ severity.
However, given that conservatism historically has been associated with respect for tradition, authority and social institutions, we reasoned that ideology alone might not explain the spread of fake news. We decided to investigate the role personality traits might play, focusing our research on conscientiousness — the tendency to regulate one’s own behavior by being less impulsive and more orderly, diligent and prudent. Our presumption was that conservatives with lower levels of conscientiousness would be more inclined to spread fake news, and that there would be no difference between highly conscientious conservatives and their liberal counterparts.
We tested these hypotheses across eight experimental studies with a sample size of more than 4,600 participants in total. In each study, participants reported their political ideology and responded to several questions evaluating their tendency toward conscientious on a five-point scale. They then were exposed to a series of fake and real news headlines — a mix of neutral, conservative or liberal-leaning in their news content — and asked to indicate their willingness to share those news stories with other people.
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