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How fake news deceives the mind: a Conicet study proposes keys to combat disinformation  -  by cronywell

How fake news deceives the mind: a Conicet study proposes keys to combat disinformation

The author of the study, Guillermo Solovey, presented the results at the last Annual Meeting of the Argentine Society for Research in Neurosciences, which was held in Buenos Aires.

One of the most striking findings is that people with more cognitive reflection have more bias, that is, they believe in what coincides with their beliefs.

Thefake news(fake news) spreads fasterand reach more people than true stories, according to a study published in the journalScience. Thus, they have the potential to harm people and society by, for example, fostering distrust in vaccination. Because of the risk that this represents,William Solovey, researcher at the Institute of Calculus (Conicet-UBA), is dedicated to studying how disinformation works and spreads.

"When there is information that we would like to be true, we have a tendency to believe it. This has an evolutionary and adaptive reason for being of the human being. That is why we need more initiatives related to changing the amount of false information that circulates and educating citizens more," the researcher introduced in dialogue with the CyTA-Leloir Agency.

Solovey spoke at the XXXIX Annual Meeting of the Argentine Society for Research in Neurosciences (SAN), which took place a few days ago in Buenos Aires. There he presented the results of one of his researches, published in 2023 inScientific Reports, about how disinformation works particularly on political issues.

Previous evidence suggested two important factors in explaining why people believe fake news. On the one hand, partisanship, that is, loyalty to an ideological group or identification with a political party. On the other, cognitive reflection, which is the ability to think analytically or reflexively before believing in something.

 

"Our work asks why people believe false information," Solovey summarized and explained that, when fine-tuning, two situations can be distinguished. "There are those who believe in things that are not true because they are unable to differentiate false information, either because they do not know, do not know or cannot distinguish it. It's like being at a bus stop and you see 64 and 39 from afar. Although the information reaches your eye, you do not have the ability to distinguish them and you are going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to say 39, sometimes 64 and sometimes 69."

Second, Solovey added, there are those who have a tendency to say that things are false or that everything is true. "Very credulous or very distrustful people, who need to have a very strong level of evidence to accept that something is true," he added. The idea of their study was to see how these two scenarios are modified among people who have more capacity for cognitive reflection.

To do this, Solovey's team conducted a test with 1353 people who evaluated whether verified statements – true or false – made by politicians were true or not. Indeed, they found that people tend to believe statements more if they agree with the politician who said them in a clear and strong relationship (partisanship). On the other hand, those who think more analytically are a bit more skeptical and tend to question statements more.

One of the most striking findings of the work was that the relationship between cognitive reflection and the ability to distinguish between truth and lies was neither very strong nor clear. "Those who had more cognitive reflection, at the same time had a little more partisan bias, they believed in what coincided with their beliefs," said the researcher.

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In short, while thinking critically helps a bit to be more skeptical, partisanship is still the strongest factor in people believing a statement, even if it's false. "Even if the person has a high level of cognitive reflection, if they have a very high partisanship, it does not matter if the news is false, they will tend to believe it. In fact, this is even more accentuated if people have more cognitive reflection. Therefore, having more capacity for analytical thinking, critical thinking, cognitive reflection at some point is not obvious that it is an individual characteristic that favors distinguishing what is true or what is a lie because in any case it can accentuate partisanship, the tendency to believe everything that coincides with what one thinks,"  Solovey explained.

Regarding possible solutions to the problem of disinformation, the researcher clarified that options to mitigate it are being studied, but "there is still no universal strategy, a key." Quickly correcting false information that circulates or pre-announcing false information that can circulate on the networks is a possible path. He also mentioned initiatives that have to do with educating citizens and providing digital or media literacy tools. "They are important so that people are prepared and can also find what is false," he concluded.

SOURCE: CyTA-Leloir Agency

Published on 05/01/2025 » 18:09   | |    |


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