Going Viral: How Fear, Socio-Cognitive Polarization and Problem-Solving Influence Fake News Detection and Proliferation During COVID-19 Pandemic
Going Viral: How Fear, Socio-Cognitive Polarization and Problem-Solving Influence Fake News Detection and Proliferation During COVID-19 Pandemic
复制标题
DOI：
10.3389/fcomm.2020.562588
复制
发表时间：
2021-01-12
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
Antonietti, Alessandro
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Salvi, Carola;Iannello, Paola;Antonietti, Alessandro
在不确定的时期，人们经常寻找信息来帮助减轻恐惧，这可能使他们容易受到虚假信息的影响。在 COVID-19 大流行期间，我们注意到错误和误导性信息的病毒式传播，这些信息损害了遏制疾病传播的集体行动和公共卫生措施。我们调查了对 COVID-19 的恐惧对社会和认知因素的影响，包括对假新闻的相信、废话的接受程度、夸大其词和解决问题的能力，这些因素来自受 COVID-19 严重打击的两个人群：意大利和美利坚合众国。为了更好地了解错误信息在 COVID-19 大流行初期的作用，我们还调查了解决问题的能力和社会认知极化是否与相信假新闻有关。结果显示，意大利和美国样本中，对 COVID-19 的恐惧与寻找有关病毒的信息和避免感染有关，以及美国样本中愿意分享真实新闻（新冠肺炎和非新冠肺炎相关）头条新闻的意愿。然而，恐惧与废话的接受度呈正相关，这表明这种流行病可能导致人们被迫走向伪深刻的存在主义信仰。此外，解决问题的能力与正确辨别真假新闻有关，而社会认知极化是这两个样本中相信假新闻的最强预测因子。从这些结果中，我们得出的结论是，反映认知僵化、忽视替代信息和非黑即白思维的结构会负面预测辨别假新闻和真实新闻的能力。这种构造还扩展到基于跳出框框思考并考虑解决问题等替代信息的推理过程。
In times of uncertainty, people often seek out information to help alleviate fear, possibly leaving them vulnerable to false information. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we attended to a viral spread of incorrect and misleading information that compromised collective actions and public health measures to contain the spread of the disease. We investigated the influence of fear of COVID-19 on social and cognitive factors including believing in fake news, bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, and problem-solving-within two of the populations that have been severely hit by COVID-19: Italy and the United States of America. To gain a better understanding of the role of misinformation during the early height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also investigated whether problem-solving ability and socio-cognitive polarization were associated with believing in fake news. Results showed that fear of COVID-19 is related to seeking out information about the virus and avoiding infection in the Italian and American samples, as well as a willingness to share real news (COVID and non-COVID-related) headlines in the American sample. However, fear positively correlated with bullshit receptivity, suggesting that the pandemic might have contributed to creating a situation where people were pushed toward pseudo-profound existential beliefs. Furthermore, problem-solving ability was associated with correctly discerning real or fake news, whereas socio-cognitive polarization was the strongest predictor of believing in fake news in both samples. From these results, we concluded that a construct reflecting cognitive rigidity, neglecting alternative information, and black-and-white thinking negatively predicts the ability to discern fake from real news. Such a construct extends also to reasoning processes based on thinking outside the box and considering alternative information such as problem-solving.