Emotions in misinformation studies: Distinguishing affective state from emotional response and misinformation recognition from acceptance

Abstract

Emotions play a crucial role in information processing. Prior studies indicate that high-arousal emotions may elicit rapid, intuitive thinking, tricking people into judging misinformation as truthful. Yet, few studies have distinguished prior affective state from emotional reactions to false news, both of which may influence belief in falsehoods in different ways. Replicating and extending Martel et al. (2020), we conducted a pre-registered online survey in Austria (N = 422), investigating associations of emotions and discernment of false and real news related to COVID-19. We found no associations of affective state with discernment, but different emotional responses to false and real news — namely, more anger and less joy for false news. A curvilinear relationship of anger with discernment showed that both participants who were good and bad at discerning real from false news responded with anger. The automated analysis of 5,613 open-ended textual responses suggested that anger may have arisen for different reasons in these different groups. It seemed to also arise when people recognized the false news as such, not only when people accepted it. We conclude that studies need to distinguish between prior affective state and emotional response to misinformation and consider individuals’ prior beliefs as determinants of emotions.