“If This account is True, It is Most Enormously Wonderful”: Interestingness-If-True and the Sharing of True and False News

Abstract

Why would people share news they think might not be accurate? We identify a factor that, alongside accuracy, drives the sharing of true and fake news: the 'interestingness-if-true' of a piece of news. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 904), participants were presented with a series of true and fake news, and asked to rate the accuracy of the news, how interesting the news would be if it were true, and how likely they would be to share it. Participants were more willing to share news they found more interesting-if-true, as well as news they deemed more accurate. They deemed fake news less accurate but more interesting-if-true than true news, and were more likely to share true news than fake news. As expected, interestingnessif-true differed from interestingness and accuracy, and had good face validity. Higher trust in mass media was associated with a greater ability to discern true from fake news, and participants rated as more accurate news that they had already been exposed to (especially for true news). We argue that people may not share news of questionable accuracy by mistake, but instead because the news has qualities that compensate for its potential inaccuracy, such as being interesting-if-true.

Research note: Fighting misinformation or fighting for information?

“…The rate at which people accept reliable information or misinformation when exposed to it is less clear. Here, we take as a starting point experiments in which participants are asked to ascertain the accuracy of true or fake news, suggesting that they accept approximately 60% of true news and 30% of fake news (Altay et al, 2021a;Pennycook et al, 2020; see Appendix A for more information). As shown below, the conclusions we draw from our models are robust to variations in these parameters (e.g., if people accept 90% of misinformation instead of 30%).…”

“…In psychological experiments, participants are approximately as likely to accept a piece of fake news as they are to reject a piece of true news (Altay et al, 2021a;Pennycook et al, 2020;, suggesting that the acceptance of fake news and the rejection of true news are issues of similar amplitude. Such results, combined with the apparent harmfulness of some fake news, have led to a focus on fighting misinformation.…”

Misinformation on Misinformation: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

“…Sharing or liking is not believing. People interact with misinformation for a variety of reasons: to socialize, to express skepticism, outrage or anger, to signal group membership, or simply to have a good laugh (Acerbi, 2019a;Altay et al, 2021;Berriche & Altay, 2020;Brashier & Schacter, 2020;Duffy et al, 2019;Guess et al, 2019;Metzger et al, 2021;Ng & Yuan, 2020;Osmundsen et al, 2020;Waruwu et al, 2020).…”

Misinformation about COVID-19: Psychological Insights

“…At the same time, technology is becoming increasingly user-friendly, providing a variety of tools in which good quality content can be easily created. Content that is of higher quality is more likely to be perceived to be from a more reliable source, and thus is more likely to be believed [30]. Using technology, such content can be instantaneously uploaded and shared online, through one of the many popular, easily accessible, free-of-charge, social media platforms, for instance.…”

“…From this perspective, people share misinformation, even when knowing it is inaccurate, for reasons driven by their political or moral ideology. These reasons might include virtue signaling [98], social dominance orientation [99], furthering a political agenda [77], or simply because the information is thought to be interesting [30]. However, according to Pennybrook et al [83], just 16% of shared misinformation is driven by preference-based motives.…”