The Influence of Friendly and Hostile Information on Economic Behaviour in the Context of Geopolitical Confrontation

Abstract

The article considers a set of reasons for influencing the information field on an individual’s and a group’s economic behaviour in conditions of information redundancy. The authors proceed from the general hypothesis that the phenomenon of trust in the information source is at the heart of the data impact that causes rush demand. Based on analysing objective economic information and economic and psychological monitoring, the context of expectations and work with information is highlighted. According to the context, a working experimental hypothesis is formed that the subjective level of trust in sources of economic information correlates with increasing a brain activity in the frontal parts of the brain in delta and theta rhythms, as well as in functional asymmetry. On the basis of the experimental data, it is established that there is some relationship between the left hemispheric asymmetry when perceiving a source with a low level of confidence and a decrease in asymmetry when perceiving a source with a subjectively positive level of confidence. The individual’s attitude to the information source is positively correlated with the level of trust. The study result is a set of theses that fake news and information channels that do not inspire confidence: a) do not cause negative emotions in the information recipient, and therefore are not blocked as the information field components; b) contribute to a person’s inclination to continue tracking even the information that he obviously perceives as unreliable despite the data redundancy in general and his crisis state. Consequently, hostile and friendly information equally comes to the recipient, and the lack of trust is not a tool for personal rejection of its consumption.