The impact of cognitive biases on the believability of fake news

Abstract

ABSTRACTModern technologies, especially social networks, contribute to the rapid evolution and spread of fake news. Although the creation of fake news is a serious issue, it is the believability of fake news and subsequent actions that produce negative outcomes that can be harmful to individuals and society. Prior research has focused primarily on the role of confirmation bias in explaining the believability of fake news, but other biases are likely. In this research, we use theories of truth and a taxonomy of 10 cognitive biases to conduct an exploratory, qualitative survey of social media users. Five cognitive biases (herd, framing, overconfidence, confirmation, and anchoring) emerge as the most influential. We then propose a Cognitive Bias Mitigation Model of methods that could reduce the believability of fake news. The mitigation methods are grouped according to three themes as they relate to the five biases.KEYWORDS: Fake newscognitive biasconfirmation biasbias mitigation modelmisinformationdisinformation AcknowledgementsThere is no financial conflict of interest. Data is available upon request from the authors. IRB (blinded). Research supported in part (blinded). We wish to thank the editor-in-chief as well as the anonymous review team for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. This implies that the consumer of information has prior knowledge of, or a belief system about, the topics being consumed.2. The intermediate versions are available from the authors.