Mindsets and politically motivated reasoning about fake news

Abstract

False information may be published with the intention of misleading the public, and such fake news is often difficult to detect. Ideological fake news may pose a particular challenge, as people may be less able to detect false information that supports their prior beliefs. The difficulty of detecting fake news with an ideological slant may be compounded if people are motivated to defend their beliefs. Building on the mindset theory of action phases, we investigated motivational states as moderators of people’s ability to detect fake news. We tested two competing predictions to study the cognitive and motivational processes implicated in fake news detection. Both predictions concern an ideological belief bias, where people tend to accept information that agrees with their partisan identities and to reject information that disagrees with them. First, motivated reasoning accounts posit that deliberation should reinforce the ideological belief bias because reasoning primarily serves to defend and rationalize one’s own position. An opposing view, based on dual-process theory, assumes that deliberation attenuates the ideological belief bias by facilitating an unbiased assessment of new information. An online experiment (N = 497) tested these competing accounts. Participants were induced with deliberative/implemental/control mindsets prior to rating the veracity of (true/fake) news headlines. Some headlines favored a Republican view; others leaned toward a Democrat perspective. Based on self-reported political preference (Democrat vs. Republican), headlines were categorized as congruent or incongruent with participants’ political views. Consistent with an ideological belief bias, participants accepted more congruent than incongruent news, and they were more likely to fail to detect favorable fake news. In the main analysis, mindsets did not moderate the ideological belief bias, but showed interesting relationships with cognitive reflection and dishonest behavior. Further exploration using signal-detection theory suggested that the deliberative mindset might be associated with increased skepticism, thereby promoting fake news detection.