Requirement This paper asks you to identify an argument’s claim and reason. You will also need to explain the general context for the argument, the author’s purpose and audience and how you have been

https://www .nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/fake-news.html 1/2

GRAY M ATTE R

Wh y D o Peop le F a ll f or F a k e N ew s?

Are they blinded by their political pas sions? Or are they just intellectually lazy?

By G ord on P en nyco ok a n d D avid R an d

D r. P en nyc o ok a n d D r. R an d a re p syc h olo gis ts .

Jan. 19, 2019

What mak es people susceptible to fake news and other forms of str ategic misinformation? And what, if an ything, can

be done about it?

These questions ha ve become mor e urgent in r ecent years, not least bec ause of revelations about the Rus sian

campaign to influence the 2016 U nited States presidential election b y disseminating pr opaganda thr ough social

media platforms. I n general, our politic al culture seems to be incr easingly populated b y people who espouse

outlandish or demonstr ably false claims that often align with their politic al ideology.

T he good news is that psy chologists and other social scientists ar e working har d to understand what pr events people

from seeing thr ough propaganda. T he bad news is that ther e is not yet a consensus on the answ er. M uch of the

debate among r esearchers falls into t wo opposing c amps. One gr oup claims that our abilit y to reason is hijack ed by

our partisan con victions: that is, w e’r e pr one to r ationalization. T he other group — to which the t wo of us belong —

claims that the pr oblem is that we often fail to exer cise our critical faculties: that is, w e’r e ment ally lazy .

How ev er, r ecent r esearch suggests a silv er lining to the dispute: Both c amps appear to be capturing an aspect of the

problem. Once w e understand ho w much of the pr oblem is a result of rationalization and ho w much a result of

laziness, and as w e learn mor e about which factor pla ys a role in what t ypes of situations, w e’l l be bet ter able to

design polic y solutions to help combat the pr oblem.

The r ationalization c amp, which has g ained considerable prominence in r ecent years, is built ar ound a set of theories

contending that when it comes to politic ally char ged issues, people use their intel lectual abilities to persuade

themselves to believ e what they want to be true r ather than at tempting to actual ly discover the truth. Ac cording to

this view , political passions es sentially mak e people unr easonable, ev en — indeed, especial ly — if they tend to be

good at reasoning in other contexts. (R oughly: The smarter y ou are, the bet ter you ar e at rationalizing .)

Some of the most striking evidence used to support this position comes fr om an influential 2012 study in which the

law pr ofessor Dan K ahan and his col leagues found that the degr ee of political polarization on the is sue of climate

change was greater among people who scor ed higher on measures of science literary and numerical ability than it

was among those who scor ed lower on these tests. Appar ently, mor e “analytic al” Democr ats were bet ter able to

convince themselv es that climate change w as a problem, while mor e “analytic al” R epublic ans were bet ter able to

convince themselv es that climate change w as not a problem. Professor K ahan has found similar r esults in, for

example, studies about gun contr ol in which he experimentally manipulated the partisan slant of information that

participants w ere ask ed to as sess.

The implic ations her e are pr ofound: R easoning c an exacerbate the pr oblem, not provide the solution, when it comes

to partisan disputes o ver facts. F urther evidence cited in support of this of ar gument comes from a 2010 study by the

politic al scientists Br endan Nyhan and J ason Reifler, who found that appending corr ections to misleading claims in

news articles can sometimes backfir e: Not only did corr ections fail to reduce misperceptions, but they also

sometimes incr eased them. It seemed as if people who w ere ideologic ally inclined to believ e a given falsehood

w ork ed so har d to come up with r easons that the corr ection was wrong that they c ame to believe the falsehood ev en

more str ongly .

https://ny ti.ms/2RV2yCB 4/18/2020 Opinion | Why Do People Fall for Fake News? - The New York Times

https://www .nytimes.com/2019/01/19/opinion/sunday/fake-news.html 2/2

But this “r ationalization ” account, though compel ling in some contexts, does not strik e us as the most natural or most

common explanation of the human w eakness for misinformation. W e believe that people often just don ’t think

critic ally enough about the information they encounter .

A great deal of r esearch in cogniti ve psy cholog y has sho wn that a lit tle bit of reasoning goes a long w ay to war d

forming ac curate beliefs. F or example, people who think mor e analytically (those who ar e more likely to exer cise

their analytic skil ls and not just trust their “ gut” response) ar e less super stitious, les s likely to believ e in conspiracy

theories and les s recepti ve to seemingly pr ofound but actual ly empty assertions ( like “ Wholenes s quiets infinite

phenomena ”). This body of evidence suggests that the main factor explaining the ac ceptance of fake news could be

cogniti ve lazines s, especial ly in the context of social media, wher e news items are often skimmed or mer ely glanced

at.

To test this pos sibility, w e recently r an a set of studies in which participants of v arious political persuasions indic ated

whether they believ ed a series of news stories. W e showed them r eal headlines t aken fr om social media, some of

which w ere true and some of which w ere false. W e gauged whether our participants w ould engage in reasoning or

“go with their gut” b y having them complete something c alled the cogniti ve r eflection test, a test widely used in

psy cholog y and beha vioral economic s. It consists of questions with intuiti vely compel ling but incorr ect answers,

which c an be easily sho wn to be wrong with a modicum of r easoning. (For example: “If y ou’r e running a r ace and

you pas s the per son in second place, what place ar e you in?” If y ou’r e not thinking y ou might say “first place, ” when

of course the answ er is second place. )

We found that people who eng aged in more reflecti ve r easoning w ere bet ter at tel ling true fr om false, regardles s of

whether the headlines aligned with their politic al views. (We contr olled for demogr aphic facts such as lev el of

education as w ell as politic al leaning.) I n fol low-up studies y et to be published, w e have sho wn that this finding w as

replic ated using a pool of participants that w as nationally repr esent ative with r espect to age, gender , ethnicity and

region of r esidence, and that it applies not just to the abilit y to discern true claims from false ones but also to the

ability to identify exces sively partisan co ver age of true ev ents.

Our results str ongly suggest that someho w cultivating or pr omoting our r easoning abilities should be part of the

solution to the kinds of partisan misinformation that cir culate on social media. And other new research provides

evidence that ev en in highly politic al contexts, people ar e not as irrational as the r ationalization c amp contends.

Recent studies ha ve sho wn, for inst ance, that corr ecting partisan misper ceptions does not backfir e most of the time

— contrary to the r esults of Pr ofessors N yhan and R eifler described abo ve — but instead leads to mor e accurate

beliefs.

We ar e not ar guing that findings such as Pr ofessor K ahan’s that support the r ationalization theory ar e unreliable. Our

argument is that c ases in which our r easoning goes awry — which are surprising and at tention-grabbing — seem to

be exceptions rather than the rule. R eason is not always, or ev en typic ally, held c aptive b y our partisan biases. I n

many and perhaps most c ases, it seems, reason does promote the formation of ac curate beliefs.

This is not just an ac ademic debate; it has r eal implications for public polic y. Our r esearch suggests that the solution

to politic ally char ged misinformation should in volv e dev oting r esources to the spr ead of accurate information and to

training or encour aging people to think mor e critically. Y ou ar en’t doomed to be unr easonable, even in highly

politicized times. J ust remember that this is also true of people y ou disagree with.

Gordon Pennycook is an assis tant professor a t the Hill & L evene Schools o f Business a t the University o f Regina, in S askatchewan. David R and is an

associate professor a t the Sloan S chool of Management and the depar tment of brain and cognitive sciences a t the Massachuse tts Ins titute o f

Technolog y.

F ollo w The N ew Y ork Times Opinion section on Fac ebook , Twit ter (@NY Topinion) and Ins tagr am .

A version o f this article appears in print on Jan. 20, 2019 , S ection SR , Page 12 of the N ew York edition with the headline: Why Do P eople Fall for F ake News?