Time pressure reduces misinformation discrimination ability but does not alter response bias

Abstract

Many parts of our social lives are speeding up, a process known as social acceleration. How social acceleration impacts people’s ability to judge the veracity of online news, and ultimately the spread of misinformation, is largely unknown. We examined the effects of accelerated online dynamics, operationalised as time pressure, on online misinformation evaluation. Participants judged the veracity of true and false news headlines with or without time pressure. We used signal detection theory to disentangle the effects of time pressure on discrimination ability and response bias, as well as on four key determinants of misinformation susceptibility: analytical thinking, ideological congruency, motivated reflection, and familiarity. Time pressure reduced participants’ ability to accurately distinguish true from false news (discrimination ability) but did not alter their tendency to classify an item as true or false (response bias). Key drivers of misinformation susceptibility, such as ideological congruency and familiarity, remained influential under time pressure. Our results highlight the dangers of social acceleration online: People are less able to accurately judge the veracity of news online, while prominent drivers of misinformation susceptibility remain present. Interventions aimed at increasing deliberation may thus be fruitful avenues to combat online misinformation.

Understanding belief in political statements using a model-driven experimental approach: a registered report

“…Cognitive reflection did not demonstrate an improvement in truth discernment, as we hypothesised (H1). This outcome contrasts with the consistent evidence reported in several studies that specifically examined this question in the context of belief in fake news 16 , 29 , 86 , 87 . The underlying reasons for this disparity remain uncertain and warrant further investigation.…”

“…Firstly, we did not experimentally manipulate the cognitive effort exerted by participants when judging the veracity of statements, as some previous studies have done. These methods include imposing response deadlines 86 , 87 or providing instructions to carefully deliberate on the statements 85 . While our study design does not allow for drawing causal inferences, this was not the primary objective.…”

“…Furthermore, after approval of our Stage 1 protocol, an alternative version of the CRT with less numeric elements has been proposed 88 . The latter serves as an interesting alternative, addressing numeracy confounds, and has already been used in Sultan et al's study on belief in misinformation 86 .…”

“…Additionally, to delve deeper into the mechanisms of partisan information processing and the role of cognitive reflection, we adopted a hierarchical Bayesian modelling approach to SDT, as recently utilised by Sultan et al 86 . This approach goes beyond mere mathematical descriptions of behaviour and aims to understand how individuals make decisions based on available information.…”

“One-second wait”: A simple and effective intervention to boost judgment accuracy

“…For example, in medical diagnoses, doctors may be able to accurately judge whether there are abnormal diseases in an organ only by waiting for 1s before their final judgment (e.g., 33). Furthermore, in judgments regarding health misinformation on social media, readers may be able to make more accurate judgments of whether a certain health claim is a fact (e.g., "Vaccines prevent disease outbreaks") or not (e.g., "Vaccines cause disease outbreaks") by making them wait for 1s (e.g., 34; see also 35).…”