Who falls for fake news? Psychological and clinical profiling evidence of fake news consumers

To believe or not to believe: Personality, cognitive, and emotional factors involving fake news perceived accuracy

“…Our finding is in line with previous work supporting the relationship between fake news believability and unusual beliefs/magical ideation (Bronstein et al, 2019; Escolà‐Gascón et al, 2023). Delusion‐prone individuals are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories (Dagnall et al, 2015), believe in paranormal phenomena (Pechey & Halligan, 2011), and consider as real senseless explanations for ambiguous events (Bronstein & Cannon, 2017).…”

“…Moreover, there is a positive correlation between magical beliefs and intuitive thinking (Šrol & De Neys, 2021). Intuitive thinking may serve as a moderating variable that explains why participants with higher scores in the psychoticism trait domain were not effective in detecting fake news (Escolà‐Gascón et al, 2023). Consistent with the dual‐process theory model (Pennycook & Rand, 2019), individuals who fail to distinguish between scientifically grounded information and absurd information tend to rely on cognitive reasoning characterized by intuition (Williams et al, 2022).…”

The Influence of Affective Empathy on Online News Belief: The Moderated Mediation of State Empathy and News Type

“…Regarding news characteristics, the higher the credibility of the source [6,7] and the greater one's familiarity [3,8] with the news, the more accurately participants perceived its believability. Concerning individual differences, previous research found that differences in personal traits may affect news belief, such as personality [8][9][10][11][12], thinking style [4,[13][14][15], media literacy [16][17][18], and prior attitudes [19][20][21][22].…”

Exploring rumor behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic through an information processing perspective: The moderating role of critical thinking

“…In recent years, scholars have been devoting more attention to the role of critical thinking in online information dissemination, with a growing number of studies emerging ( Amaral et al, 2020 ; Escolà-Gascón et al, 2023 ; Guo et al, 2023 ; Machete & Turpin, 2020 ; Puig et al, 2021 ). Critical thinking is instrumental in the perception of environmental stimuli.…”