Fake news spreaders may have unusual thoughts–researchers

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On social networks, misinformation is everywhere. And while some might think to check the information they share, a minority of internet users opt to share erroneous content, sometimes deliberately.

A UK research team set out to find out what differentiates these people, and what motivates them.

People with higher scores on a measure of positive schizotypy are more likely to share false information about politics on social networks, claims a study led by Tom Buchanan of the University of Westminster in the UK, published in the journal Plos One.

In a news release, professor Buchanan explains: “Positive schizotypy is the name given to a tendency to experience unusual thoughts of various kinds. This does not mean you have mental health problems — everyone has these kind of experiences. It’s just that some people have them more often than others. Sharing false information on social media, both accidentally and on purpose, seems to be related to this tendency.”

The research involved 1,916 US residents, divided into four studies.

The first looked at the relationship between individual differences and the tendency of users to share false information. The second study analyzed the reasons why people share such false information.

In the third study, participants, whose individual differences and motivations were assessed, were presented with a series of political news headlines, both true and false. They were asked to indicate whether they would consider sharing each of them, and whether they considered them to be true.

In the fourth study, the researchers evaluated the actual tweets posted by the participants. The aim was to determine whether the factors identified in studies 1, 2 and 3 were associated with the actual sharing of false information on Twitter.

‘Need for chaos’

The researchers’ findings identify a link between positive schizotypy and the sharing of false information, whether participants do so knowingly or not.

“While a range of motivations for sharing political information online were associated with sharing false information, two appeared particularly important: a desire to share political stories to attack or manipulate others, and to share political stories in order to raise awareness. While individuals reported different motivations for sharing specific false stories, these two factors appeared to influence both deliberate and accidental sharing of false stories,” the researchers explain in their paper.

According to the researchers’ explanations, this positive schizotypy is more associated with decision-making based on intuition but also on prejudice, rather than on “reflective thought.”

While the researchers do not dispute the presumed complexity of the mechanism involved, they do note that participants frequently cited “awareness” as their main motivation for sharing political information.

Nevertheless, some people want to cause chaos, and are fully aware of the inaccuracy of the information shared: “Another potentially important characteristic is a ‘need for chaos.’ This reflects the desire of some individuals to disrupt society in order to enhance their own (currently marginalized) status. It has been shown to influence motivation to share hostile political information and self-reports of deliberately sharing false information,” the researchers say.

For the academics, the idea is to better understand the reasons that lead some people to share this kind of false information.

“Understanding the role of motivation in more detail, as well as the effects of positive schizotypy, are likely to be productive themes for future misinformation research,” they conclude.