This discussion is based on this research paper and this article about it in the New York Times. The paper is entitled Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning and the researchers are Gordon Pennycook and David G. Rand who are at Yale.
The “laziness hypothesis” of belief formation challenges the “hijacked hypothesis”, or maybe complements it: The current mainstream explanation for irrational thinking in politics is because our ability to reason is subverted by our partisan beliefs, ideology and moral mindset. The ‘hijacked hypothesis’ (my moniker) holds that conscious rational thinking is applied mainly to defend existing belief, ideology and morals. That kind of thinking is considered to reflect a powerful unconscious bias called motivated reasoning. The rationale holds that our conscious minds do not operate critically assess whether asserted facts and associated reasoning are true and make logical sense.
That idea faces competition from another theory, the ‘laziness hypothesis’ (my moniker). In a new paper, Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning, the authors posit that the explanation for why people are susceptible to fake news is more a matter of mental laziness than conscious reason being hijacked by the motivated reasoning bias. The authors describe their research goal and their findings:
Here we contrast two broad accounts of the cognitive mechanisms that explain belief in fake news: A motivated reasoning account [the hijacked hypothesis] that suggests that belief in fake news is driven primarily by partisanship, and a classical reasoning account where belief in fake news is driven by a failure to engage in sufficient analytic reasoning [the laziness hypothesis]. . . . . Why do people believe blatantly inaccurate news headlines (“fake news”)? Do we use our reasoning abilities to convince ourselves that statements that align with our ideology are true, or does reasoning allow us to effectively differentiate fake from real regardless of political ideology? . . . . Our findings therefore suggest that susceptibility to fake news is driven more by lazy thinking than it is by partisan bias per se – a finding that opens potential avenues for fighting fake news.
What some of the data looks like: In the graph below, a score of -1.0 applies to people who believe 100% of fake news. A score of +1.0 applies to people who believe 100% of real news. A score of 0.0 applies to people who cannot distinguish fake from real news to any extent. Deliberative refers to people who are mostly conscious analytic thinkers, and intuitive refers to unconscious intuitive-emotional-moral thinkers. The good news is that regardless of their main mode of thinking, most people can distinguish real from fake to some extent. The data showing that deliberative thinkers are better at rejecting fake news supports the idea that laziness is more important than motivated reasoning in why people believe or disbelieve fake news. This is evidence that the laziness hypothesis is a better explanation for the data.
The authors summarize two of the three studies their paper discusses:
Across two studies with 3446 participants, we found consistent evidence that analytic thinking plays a role in how people judge the accuracy of fake news. Specifically, individuals who are more willing to think analytically when given a set of reasoning problems (i.e., two versions of the Cognitive Reflection Test) are less likely to erroneously think that fake news is accurate. Crucially, this was not driven by a general skepticism toward news media: More analytic individuals were, if anything, more likely to think that legitimate (“real”) news was accurate. . . . . More analytic individuals were also better able to discern real from fake news regardless of their political ideology, and of whether the headline was Pro-Democrat, Pro-Republican, or politically neutral; and this relationship was robust to controlling for age, gender, and education.
What to do next? The authors discuss the problem, but not possible solutions:
Contrary to the popular Motivated System 2 Reasoning account of political cognition [the hijacked hypothesis], our evidence indicates that people fall for fake news because they fail to think [the laziness hypothesis]; not because they think in a motivated or identity-protective way. This suggests that interventions that are directed at making the public more thoughtful consumers of news media may have promise. Ironically, the invention of the internet and social media – which resulted from a great deal of analytic thinking – may now be exacerbating our tendency to rely on intuition, to the potential peril of both ourselves and society as a whole. In a time where truth is embattled, it is particularly important to understand of whom (and why) inaccurate beliefs take hold.
From this observer’s point of view, it is also important to test ways to nudge the public into being more deliberative or critical consumers of news media. As PD points out in his discussion of this paper at his channel, Books & Ideas, that seems to be hard to do:
I've argued (against the current grain) that learning and practicing critical thinking skills and learning civics in an emotionally engaging setting would go a long way in building up "rationality-muscles" that have long atrophied in the age of click-of -the-mouse news and communications generally. . . . . I do know how hard it is to awaken sincere critical thinking in people of any age. . . . . Critical thinking, reading and writing, and other skills are not readily internalized by many students. What I found, for what it's worth, is that the key was to find something that awakens curiosity and emotional interest.
How does one go about building a critical thinking mindset? This sounds like a one mind at a time endeavor. That seems to be a task for public education. At least in that realm, methods to teach critical thinking exist and maybe existing knowledge would sufficient if funded and applied on a nationwide scale. It seems to be a goal that requires long-term effort. This seems to be a prickly problem.
B&B orig: 1/24/19
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