Believe It or Not! The Impact of Exposure to Misinformation of Varying Levels of Perceived Truthfulness on Political Attitudes and Beliefs

Abstract

In recent years, misinformation—frequently referred to by the popular moniker “fake news”—has become increasingly relevant to the American political sphere, particularly in the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, claims of fraud in the 2020 election, and vaccine hesitancy resulting from the circulation of COVID-19 misinformation. In an age where the ideological divide between the American political parties runs deeper than ever before, it was thought that exposure to fake news articles may result in an increase in polarization, and a decrease in trust in media and government, even if the people who read these articles do not believe the information contained within to be true. To test this prediction, an experiment was run in which subjects were asked to listen to an audio clip that may be plausible or implausible and pro-Republican or pro-Democrat, or a control group unrelated to politics. It was expected that participants would be more willing to accept plausible politically congenial articles and dismiss implausible ones as obviously fake and thus harmless. Politically uncongenial articles, on the other hand, were expected to provoke feelings of resentment toward the opposing party. Unfortunately, the manipulation check for the experiment failed. While the mean perceived accuracy for implausible audio was lower than plausible audio, the difference was too subtle to be statistically significant. However, all experimental audio was perceived as significantly less accurate than the control audio, allowing for some interpretation of the effects more generally. These effects were limited. There was no statistically significant effect of exposure to the treatment groups on affective polarization, nor trust in media, nor political institutions such as the White House, Congress, or the election system. Most of the difference in scoring for these values was captured by control variables such as sentiment toward Former President Donald Trump or the social networking website Facebook, and perceived and actual political knowledge. There was, however, a significant difference recorded in the presumed influence of misinformation. Participants rated partisans as significantly less likely to believe or share politically uncongenial misinformation, but just as likely to believe or share politically congenial information as truthful information. This appears to suggest that the purported effects of misinformation are more perceived than actual. For this reason, more subtle interventions aimed at reducing effective spread, rather than raising awareness, may be advisable.