Hungarian, lazy, and biased: the role of analytic thinking and partisanship in fake news discernment on a Hungarian representative sample

Abstract

Abstract“Why do people believe blatantly inaccurate news headlines? Do we use our reasoning abilities to convince ourselves that statements that align with our ideology are true, or does reasoning allow us to effectively differentiate fake from real regardless of political ideology?” These were the questions of Pennycook and Rand (2019), and they are more than actual three years later in Eastern Europe (especially in Hungary) in the light of the rise of populism, and the ongoing war in Ukraine – with the flood of disinformation that follows. In this study, using a representative Hungarian sample (N = 991) we wanted to answer the same questions—moving one step forward and investigating alternative models. We aimed to extend the original research with the examination of digital literacy and source salience on media truth discernment. Most of the observations of Pennycook and Rand were confirmed: people with higher analytic thinking were better at discerning disinformation. However, the results are in line with the synergistic integrative model as partisanship interacted with cognitive reflection: anti-government voters used their analytic capacities to question both concordant and discordant fake news more than pro-government voters. Furthermore, digital literacy increased detection, but source salience did not matter when perceiving disinformation.

Reasoning versus prior beliefs: The case of COVID‐19 fake news

“…We also explore the relative strength of cognitive and belief predictors on trust and sharing of COVID‐19 stories and fake news discernment. In contrast with previous research (Faragó et al, 2023; Pennycook, McPhetres, et al, 2021; Pennycook & Rand, 2019b, 2021), analytic thinking is not an important predictor of trust in our study. On the other hand, scientific reasoning significantly negatively associates with trust in fake news (but not real news).…”

“…Similarly to results of Luo et al (2022), we observe that our participants are rather suspicious toward all news in general, meaning that ratings of trustworthiness are below scale average for both real news and fake news. In line with previous research (e.g., Faragó et al, 2023; Pennycook & Rand, 2019b), fake news in our study are on average trusted significantly less than real news, and people are also less willing to share it.…”

“…Most of the extant fake news research focuses on political disinformation (e.g., linked to the Brexit referendum or Donald Trump presidency; Guess et al, 2018;Marshall & Drieschova, 2018;Pennycook & Rand, 2019a). In this domain, the studies usually report that the ability to distinguish politically oriented fake news is positively correlated with analytic thinking, regardless of whether the news is consistent with one's prior beliefs or not (Faragó et al, 2023;Pennycook & Rand, 2019b). However, a considerable volume of fake news has recently emerged also in novel (and nonpolitical) contexts, in which analytic thinking and belief consistency might have different relative effects on distinguishing fake news from real news.…”

The Viral Warfare – Uncovering the Connection between Conspiracy Theories on COVID and the War in Ukraine

“…We also do not know what role does other factors such as Conspiracy mentality, trust in the media, party preference, and socioeconomic variables such as education play in this relationship, and how much is it caused by some kind of horizontal justi cation-monological thinking. We ll this research gap through representative survey research in Hungary-a country where conspiracy theories are often spread by the government and mainstream media (Turza, 2023;Faragó, Krekó, Orosz, 2023).…”

Evaluation of misinformation among pro-Ukrainian Latvians – the role of prior attitude, analytical thinking, and emotions

“…Misinformation (false information that is spread, regardless of intent to mislead), including disinformation (deliberately misleading or biased information spread with the intent to mislead), “fake news,” propaganda, and conspiracy theories, present significant social, economic, and political problems worldwide (Van Bavel et al, 2021 ). For some time, the rise of such online content has also been noticed in Central and Eastern Europe regarding such topics as COVID-19, politics, and, more recently, the war in Ukraine (Faragó et al, 2023 ). In the context of Russian aggression, widespread disinformation campaigns and user-created misinformation are a threat not only to established democratic systems through the rise of illiberal populism but also to national security.…”