What make us believe a random social media post or reel more than a scientific or factual evidence.Even being from a psychology background. I wonder what goes in our mind that we believe misinformation easily. Elizabeth Loftus studied the effect of Misinformation on eyewitness testimony. Misinformation effect occurs when a person episodic memory is affected by post-event experiences. Misinformation is known as the misleading, false and inaccurate information shared around.
MD. S (2021) analyzed 419 fake news published in India. But what makes us believe the misinformation so easily: these are our internal cognitive factors as well as the external factors (Beauvais, 2022). External factors include: Availability of the misinformation and fake news on the mainstream of media, on social media information is unselected and circulates from many sources without verifying the accuracy or reliability of the information. One of the key elements of fake news is: uncertainty, the doubtful veracity of fake news leads to anxiety and fear. Social media supports unverified rumors as people do not retweet about the unverified rumor being solved or not.
Internal factors include:
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- confirmation bias includes seeking information and evidence that concordant with one’s personal or existing beliefs, values and expectation. For example, a person who believes in ayurvedic medicine will instantly believe a reel showing the “Benefits of Ayurvedic treatment”.
- Prior exposure and the Illusory effect mean that more often people are exposed to a statement and information the more likely they are going to believe it’s accurate and true. For example, a forwarded fake news on Whatsapp becomes familiar and people perceived it to be true.
- People tend to trust people with elite personalities they see in the social media while some are
- Recognized experts and some, are the great propagators known as the so-called experts of the fields with scientific background.
- Emotional triggers: Emotions are used as the source of marketing since old times. When social media contents trigger our emotions of anger, fear, etc it automatically shut down our logical brain.
- Cognitive Ease: Our brain prefers information that is easy to process and arrives in a short span of time. More the number of likes on the fake news reels or posts also increases it’s reliability for people. This leads to believe in information that is simple to understand irrespective of it’s validity.
- Ingroup Identity: People are more likely to believe information that comes from their in group members for example, family members, friends, our political leaders, social community
The way to protect ourselves from the psychological harm of misinformation is by pausing before believing an important or triggering content. Provide your brain with a movement to question the accuracy of the content. Try to verify the source of the content. Check if the news is emotionally triggering or manipulating to mislead you. Developing Critical thinking and analytical Thinking instead of following intuitive reasoning. Understand how algorithm works, algorithm depends on engagement and not accuracy. The more an individual share, watch, comment and like a type of content the more similar contents are shown in their feed.
In current scenario, huge amount of content is available for people to consume. Visually rich narratives, fast scrolling increases the chances of consuming fake news by reducing the analytical thinking and increasing the reliance on shortcuts and not accuracy. The consequences are huge from health misconceptions to economic and national health level harm. There are psychological as well as technological factors that contribute to the belief in false information. The answer lies not only in the gadget but also in raising awareness of it.
References
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- Beauvais C. Fake news: Why do we believe it? Joint Bone Spine. 2022 Jul;89(4):105371. doi: 10.1016/j.jbspin.2022.105371
- Al-Zaman, Md. S. (2021). Social Media Fake News in India. Asian Journal for Public Opinion Research, 9(1), 25–47. https://doi.org/10.15206/ajpor.2021.9.1.25
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