Beware of fake news! Study shows why highly educated people fall victim to disinformation

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have identified why highly educated people fall victim to disinformation online. Their meta-analysis reveals surprising patterns in how demographic and psychological factors, including age, education, political identity, analytical thinking, and motivated reflection, affect people's ability to assess the accuracy of information.

For example, people with higher levels of education are just as likely to fall for disinformation as people with lower levels of education. The study provides important information for building theory and planning interventions, writes Рhys.org.

According to statistics, almost 5 billion people around the world receive news from social media, so the impact of disinformation, especially on elections, is a growing concern.

"There's a lot of research being done on disinformation, but because of the volume of work, it's getting harder to see the connection between different factors," explains lead author Mubashir Sultan. A doctoral student at the Center for Adaptive Rationality is researching disinformation and decision-making behavior on the Internet.

The researchers conducted a meta-analysis, investigating how factors such as education, age, gender, political affiliation, analytical thinking, partisan bias, motivated reflection, and familiarity with news influence people's judgments of the veracity of online disinformation.

The researchers found no significant effect of education on people's ability to distinguish between true and false information. This contradicts the widely held belief that more educated people are likely to be less susceptible to disinformation, especially because higher education teaches us to think critically.

The study also questions assumptions about age and disinformation. While older people are often portrayed as more vulnerable to fake news, the analysis showed that they are actually better than younger people at distinguishing between true and false headlines. Older adults were also more skeptical and more likely to call headlines false.

According to experts, political identity also played a key role. The meta-analysis confirmed previous research that showed that people who identify as Republicans are more likely to be misinformed than those who identify as Democrats.

The study also found that the strongest effect in the meta-analysis was the influence of familiarity. When participants reported having seen a news headline before, they were more likely to believe it was true. This finding highlights the dangers of repeated exposure to disinformation, especially on social media.

"The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2024 ranks disinformation as one of the biggest risks to the world in the next two years," said Ralf Kurvers, co-author of the study and senior research fellow at the Max Planck Center for Adaptive Rationality.

"The results of the study emphasize the urgent need to integrate media literacy and critical thinking skills into the school curriculum from an early age. Young people, despite being considered 'digital natives', were less able to distinguish between true and false news," Kurvers added.

Therefore, more effective and age-appropriate media literacy programs designed for the younger group are extremely important, experts emphasize.

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