Studies Suggest a Useful Way to Combat “Fake News”

Presumably, you answered f. But in autumn of 1835, many a reader of the New York Sun would have answered e. As a previous blog post described, the Sun’s article about “great astronomical discoveries” duped countless civilians—and even some respected scholars.1 How did so many people fall for such a blatant hoax?

Edgar Allan Poe, who witnessed the entire saga, seemed to believe the answer lay in what we’d now call a lack of critical thinking. Reflecting on the hoax, Poe listed numerous ways people could have realized the articles were false, had they stopped to think about it.2 Instead, the sensational story swept the crowds along until Poe observed,

Not one person in ten discredited it. . . .  A grave professor of mathematics in a Virginian college told me seriously that he had no doubt of the truth of the whole affair! The great effect wrought upon the public mind is referable, first, to the novelty of the idea; secondly, to the fancy-exciting and reason-repressing character of the alleged discoveries; thirdly, to the consummate tact with which the deception was brought forth; fourthly, to the exquisite vraisemblance of the narration.3

Poe’s comments highlight how even the most influential “fake news” story of the day might have been mitigated with a little careful reasoning. For example, the critical thinking hack of asking, “Is this message true because . . . .  ?” would have helped prevent people from falling for the “news” story because it was eloquently expressed, because it was novel, or because many people believed it.

Almost two hundred years later, biblical critical thinking skills remain as effective a response to false headlines as ever. Let’s look at just a few of the recent research findings showing how these skills can combat “fake news” in today’s digital information age.

“Fake News”: No Match for Sound Thinking

For a while, a popular idea among “fake news” researchers supposed that people passively accept—and share—false headlines because the stories support people’s prior beliefs or political convictions.4 But multiple studies have recently suggested that the main reason people believe “fake news” doesn’t necessarily lie in personal biases so much as a lack of careful reasoning.5

For instance, one widely cited study began by showing people both true and false headlines featuring political or politically neutral content.6 For each headline, participants reported whether they’d seen the headline before, rated the headline’s accuracy, and indicated how likely they’d share the story on social media. Next, participants answered a series of questions including items which tested analytic thinking abilities. This revealed whether each person tended to rely more on logical reasoning or on intuitive, automatic thinking, which can lead people to fall for faulty arguments.

Results revealed that people who exercised stronger analytic thinking were significantly better at discerning fake news from real news—regardless of whether the fake news aligned with their beliefs. In fact, participants overall tended to exercise better discernment for fake headlines that otherwise would have supported their political beliefs, challenging the idea that people blindly accept whatever false news matches their convictions. People who practiced more analytic thinking also reported being less likely to share false headlines.

Conforming this finding, another study found that asking people to rate a headline’s accuracy before deciding whether to share it cut false news sharing rates in half within the experiment.7 Still another experiment found that asking people to pause and explain how they know a news story is true or false reduces the sharing of false (but not true) information—especially for stories people haven’t seen before.8

And what about stories which people have encountered earlier? Some research suggests that despite the persuasive power of repeated messages, people are less likely to begin falling for a repeated message which they know is false if they think critically about the message’s accuracy the first time they encounter it.9

The Power of Stopping to Think

Along similar lines, a different study asked two groups of people to rate true or false headlines: one group had to think intuitively while under time pressure, while the other group could work with no time limits.10 Afterwards, the first group of participants also had a chance to re-think their answers without a time limit. Results suggested that people tend to believe false headlines less when they have more time to think, and that pausing to consider a message’s truth helps correct mistakes from intuitive thinking. Again, this pattern held firm regardless of whether headlines supported people’s political beliefs.

Because these and other findings suggest the spread of false news traces back to people’s inattention to critical thinking, some researchers have been examining ways to help people stop to think about the headlines they encounter. For instance, one research team found that Twitter users shared reportedly higher-quality news stories after being prompted to rate the accuracy of a single headline.11 And Twitter itself began trialing accuracy prompts in 2020 by asking people to read articles before sharing them.12

Tools Anyone Can Use

An especially terrific aspect of combatting “fake news” with critical thinking tools—besides protecting freedom, maintaining human autonomy, and promoting a logical society—is that ordinary, everyday humans can use these tools. For instance, one study found that when politically balanced groups of laypeople13 were asked to rate the accuracy of headlines flagged as “fake news,” the laypeople’s averaged accuracy ratings corresponded to professional fact-checkers’ ratings as highly as the fact-checkers’ ratings corresponded with each other.14 And another study found that individual civilians with stronger information literacy —in other words, critical thinking skills—were the best at recognizing fake news.15

These studies illustrate how critical thinking skills are to “fake news” what food-sourcing skills are to hunger. As the old saying observes, “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for life.” But in this case, the saying might go, “Give a man a ‘checked’ fact, and you’ve told him what to think for a day. Teach a man to fact-check, and you’ve shown him how to think for life.”17

The Need for a True Starting Point

In the end, we’ve seen just some of the studies showing how learning how to stop and think critically presents an effective solution to “fake news.” However, stopping to reason only works if we have a true foundation from which to reason and a basis of accurate knowledge against which to compare new messages.18 While human reasoning is fallible, God’s Word is not.19 That’s why a biblical worldview supplies the surest starting point for thinking about all the messages we encounter—whether sitting in class, scrolling social media, or reading a newspaper about creatures on the moon.