The “Need for Chaos” and Motivations to Share Hostile Political Rumors

Abstract

Why are some people motivated to share hostile political rumors, such as conspiracy theories and other derogatory news stories? Previous research mostly focuses on the thesis that people’s partisan identities motivate them to share hostile political rumors as a way to tarnish their political opponents. In this manuscript, we demonstrate disruptive psychological motivations also play an important, but often overlooked, role in the spread of hostile rumors. We argue that many individuals who feel socially and politically marginalized are motivated to circulate hostile rumors because they wish to unleash chaos to “burn down” the entire established political order in the hope they can gain status in the process. We conducted 8 large studies (including a nationally representative study) to show that some individuals are predisposed to have a Need for Chaos when facing social isolation and discontent, and that this need is the strongest predictor of explicit motivations to share hostile political rumors. Panel and experimental data show that chaotic motivations reflect an interplay between traits related to status-seeking and states of social exclusion. Consistent with the rising inequality in the United States and beyond, we find that these motivations are strikingly prevalent. To stem the tide of hostile political rumors on social media, the present findings suggest that real-world policy solutions are needed to address the growing social and political frustrations of democratic populations.

The evolutionary psychology of mass mobilization: how disinformation and demagogues coordinate rather than manipulate

“…"This is what needs to be done and it needs to be done now!" Consistent with this, recent research shows that motivations to share negative rumors about political groups within current democracies are strongly related to support for political violence (33). This relationship is stronger than the relationship between support for political violence and motivations to believe such rumors, suggesting that violence-oriented individuals are motivated to share even though they might not believe the rumor.…”

Beyond Populism: The Psychology of Status-Seeking and Extreme Political Discontent

“…(…) Rumor prevails because it orders and organizes action-in-process." Consistent with this description, psychological studies of conspiracy theories and misinformation show that people are likely to both believe and share rumors that portray enemy groups in a negative way (Miller et al, 2016;Osmundsen et al, 2020; see also Kreko, this volume). This is interpretable as instrumental or motivated attempts to broadcast information that will mobilize audiences against the adversary.…”

Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online

“…Instead, an accuracy focus makes people more discerning. Thus, rather than partisan bias blinding our participants to the veracity of claims 11,19 , or making them purposeful disseminators of ideologically-confirming misinformation 20,22,58 , our results suggest that many people mistakenly choose to share misinformation because they were merely distracted from considering the content's accuracy.…”

“…One explanation is based on people's preferences, and stipulates that people care much less about veracity than other factors (e.g., partisanship) when making sharing decisionsand thus share misleading content even when they are aware that it is likely to be untrue. This preference based-account reflects a common narrative arising in both scholarly work [20][21][22][23] and the popular press [24][25][26] . Formalizing this account in the context of utility theory [27][28][29][30] , this account argues that in their utility functions for deciding what to share, people place less weight on accuracy than they do on one or more other (e.g., social) factors.…”