Why do people accept irrational misinformation?

What causes people to believe or accept irrational misinformation and conspiracy theories?

 Several biases can affect how we process information. 

Media bias, according to Sage’s Encyclopedia of Political Communication, happens when “the media exhibits an unjustifiable favouritism as they cover the news,” presenting “viewers with an inaccurate, unbalanced, and unfair view of the world around them.”

Confirmation bias involves the selective recall or interpretation of information that affirms or confirms prior beliefs and values.  It is our “subconscious tendency to seek and interpret information and other evidence in ways that affirm our existing beliefs, ideas, expectations, and/or hypotheses.” Confirmation bias becomes significantly pronounced when we process highly self-relevant or essential information or evoke an emotional response. 

Defining Confirmation Bias - Video

Hearing is often believing. Humans accumulate knowledge in haphazard ways.  Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness summarizes a lot of thinking about our brain and believing, stressing that “people are credulous creatures who find it very easy to believe and very difficult to doubt.”  Gilbert’s experimental research with colleagues found that our default is to believe what we hear and read. It’s, in fact, an evolutionary response. Our ancestors believed what they saw because it helped them stay alive. 

Quickly consider the following question and when you are ready, click to reveal the answer:

Many people get the bat and the ball question wrong, illustrating how we do a lot of fast thinking.  Our quick mental process can be biased. Nobel Prize winning scholar Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow summarizes decades of research about the faults and biases baked into our decision-making. We are not always as rational as we like to think.  We can’t always trust our intuition. Kahneman describes two types of thinking:  

• System one is near-instantaneous.  It happens with little effort and is fluent, fast and spontaneous.  Our experience and instinct drive it. 

• System two is slower, requires effort and is logical and conscious

Lots of us consume social media quickly, skimming and paying little attention. In this autopilot mode, we don’t critically engage, sometimes passing on or sharing misinformation unwittingly.  Some research suggests lazy thinking – and not ideology or partisan motivations – is responsible for people’s failure to sort fact from fiction in news content.  People fall for disinformation when they fall back on intuitions and emotions over reason and logic to determine what’s fact and what’s fake.  The tsunami of misinformation in social media compounds the problem. Plus, research suggests people overestimate their ability to distinguish between fake and real. Those most confident in their ability to discriminate between fact and fiction are also more likely to get duped by misinformation. 

Behavioural economist Dan Ariely offers the Funnel of Misbelief to visualize what causes people to accept irrational beliefs and conspiracy theories.  People get sucked down the funnel when they are stressed.  Ariely’s book Misbelief: What Makes Rational People Believe Irrational Things highlights how unpredictable stress can draw people into the funnel of misbelief, impairing cognitive functions and decision-making skills.  Stress can lead people to feel hard done by.  In turn, people seek answers as a means to regain some control.  Control and relief can come when people identify a villain they can blame for their situation.  This relief, warns Airely, is only temporary.  People in this situation keep looking for short-term relief in the same place.  

Websites and Online Magazines

• Listen to behavioural scientist Dan Ariely explain to CBC Radio One host Matt Galloway “what makes rational people believe irrational things.”

• Biases make people vulnerable to misinformation spread by social media

• Most Americans think social media sites censor political viewpoints

• MIT Sloan study finds strong evidence of political bias in formation of social media ties

• The algorithm that helped Google Translate become sexist

• How algorithms rule our working lives

• Why algorithms can be racist and sexist

Articles and Books

• Neutral bots probe political bias on social media

• What biases are in my internet searches?

• Opinion | There’s a reason fear runs our lives. Let’s not let it win