Summary: New research finds that people who score low on the personality trait of conscientiousness are more likely to share misinformation or fake news—and are less deterred by warnings that a story may be false.
Source: Duke University
From rumors about vaccine risks to the dangerous misuse of ivermectin, misinformation has significantly complicated public health efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although warning labels and fact-checks can reduce the spread of false stories for many people, new research from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business identifies a specific personality profile that is both more likely to share misinformation and less likely to be dissuaded by warnings that content may be false.
Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the study shows that people across the political spectrum—both liberals and conservatives—shared inaccurate news to some degree. However, the tendency was strongest among conservatives who scored low on conscientiousness. These individuals were more likely than liberals or more conscientious conservatives to share misleading information, the researchers found.
Conscientiousness, as described by senior author Hemant Kakkar, reflects a person’s tendency to be diligent, reliable, dutiful, cautious, and to control impulses while following social norms.
The purpose of the research is to add nuance to broader findings from more than a dozen prior studies since 2018 that generally linked conservative ideology with greater susceptibility to misinformation. “Political polarization is very high right now, so the existing research presents a problematic generalization,” said Kakkar, whose work focuses on management and organizations. “If we paint every conservative with the same broad brush, we’re just furthering political polarization. In this research, we argue that the effects are much more nuanced and limited to a small subset of people with conservative values.”
Across eight studies involving 4,642 participants, Kakkar and co-author Asher Lawson, a Fuqua Ph.D. student, examined many factors that might influence whether people share misinformation even after seeing a warning that the story could be false. Their analysis showed that conscientiousness plays a pivotal role.
Conscientiousness is one of the “Big Five” personality traits widely used in psychology since the 1980s to study behavior in contexts ranging from workplace dynamics to health outcomes. In this research, participants completed a 60-item questionnaire that measured conscientiousness on a seven-point scale.
Surprisingly, the researchers found that the conservative participants who were most likely to share false stories did so regardless of how much time they spent on social media, whether they agreed with the content of the falsified articles, or whether they were trying to signal support for a particular political figure. Instead, the analysis suggested that a general desire to create chaos—rather than simple partisan alignment or media distrust—helped explain why these individuals circulated false reports.
“We were shocked to see this had nothing to do even with a distrust for mainstream media,” Kakkar said. “It had more to do with dissatisfaction with current political and social institutions and a desire to break those down in favor of anarchy.”
Critically, that appetite for disruption was not quelled by fact-check warnings. Even when participants saw alerts that a story might be false, the low-conscientiousness conservatives continued to share misleading content. “One important question for future research is whether interventions can be developed to reduce this behavior, perhaps by addressing these individuals’ desire for chaos,” Kakkar added.
The researchers emphasize a more precise takeaway for the public and policymakers: it is the interaction of personality and political belief—not political ideology alone—that helps explain who is most likely to spread false information. “Conscientiousness appears to be a truly important factor determining the relationship between a person’s political ideology and whether they share disinformation,” Lawson said. “That behavior almost completely disappeared in people with higher levels of conscientiousness.”
About this psychology and personality research news
Author: Samiha Khanna
Source: Duke University
Contact: Samiha Khanna – Duke University
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Closed access.
“Of pandemics, politics, and personality: The role of conscientiousness and political ideology in the sharing of fake news” by Hemant Kakkar et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. DOI: 10.1037/xge0001120
Abstract
Of pandemics, politics, and personality: The role of conscientiousness and political ideology in the sharing of fake news
Sharing misinformation can be catastrophic, especially during moments of national crisis. While past work has linked the sharing of fake news to conservative political ideology, such broad generalizations risk deepening political polarization.
This research offers a more nuanced account by proposing that the spread of fake news is primarily driven by conservatives who score low on conscientiousness. At higher levels of conscientiousness, the study finds no meaningful difference between liberals and conservatives in their propensity to share false stories.
The hypothesis is supported across eight studies—six preregistered and two conceptual replications—with 4,642 participants and 91,144 unique participant-news observations. The results point to a general desire for chaos as the mechanism explaining the interaction between political ideology and conscientiousness. The findings also suggest that standard fact-checker interventions may be inadequate to deter the spread of fake news, highlighting the challenge of combating misinformation during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.