Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning

Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking

“…Participants rated the real news headlines as substantially more accurate ( M = 2.64) than the fake news headlines ( M = 1.95), t (401) = 20.9, p < 0.001, d = 1.04—that is, participants were fairly good at discerning fake from real. Replicating the findings of Pennycook and Rand (), headline type (0 = real, 1 = fake) interacted with CRT score (continuous), β = −0.297, t (400) = −4.23, p < 0.001, such that CRT performance was negatively correlated with lower perceptions of fake news (but not real news) accuracy (Table ; descriptive statistics can be found in SM). In contrast, removing the source from the news stories had no effect on perceptions of accuracy (Source: M fake = 1.98, M real = 2.65; No Source: M fake = 1.93, M real = 2.62), regardless of CRT (i.e., no significant main effect or interactions, p > 0.05 for all).…”

“…Study 3 provides a replication of the results of Study 2 regarding the relationship between pseudo‐profound bullshit receptivity and media truth discernment, using a different set of stimuli that were politically balanced between liberal and conservative slants (see Pennycook & Rand, ). This allowed us to also investigate whether the association between bullshit receptivity and belief in fake news varies based on the ideological alignment of the headlines (i.e., politically consistent vs. inconsistent headlines).…”

“…There are at least two broad ways in which this can be accomplished. First, analytic individuals may be assessing the content of the headlines and making judgments about plausibility (as argued by Pennycook & Rand, ). Second, analytic individuals may be using a simple source‐heuristic—that is, they may think fake news is less accurate than more intuitive individuals simply because they are more likely to pay attention to the fact that fake news stories do not come from trusted sources.…”

“…However, it is unclear how, exactly, analytic thinking supports media truth discernment. One possibility is that individuals assess the content of the headlines and make judgments about plausibility (Pennycook & Rand, ). However, another possibility is that analytic individuals use a simple source‐heuristic—that is, relative to more intuitive individuals, they think fake news is less accurate because they are more likely to pay attention to the fact that fake news stories do not come from trusted sources (something that people are good at discerning, when asked; Pennycook & Rand, ).…”

“…Past research has shown that analytic thinking is associated with lower receptivity to pseudo‐profound bullshit (Pennycook et al, ) and fake news (Pennycook & Rand, ); however, it is unclear what is driving these associations and whether pseudo‐profound bullshit receptivity and fake news susceptibility reflect a similar underlying propensity to be reflexively open‐minded to a wide range of content. We therefore report three studies that shed light on the relationship between susceptibility to fake news and other forms of bullshit, as well as the role that the propensity to think analytically plays in such a potential relationship.…”