Original Articles

Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning

Fake news is not a new phenomenon. Tabloid magazines have been around since the beginning of the 20th century (Lazer et al., 2018). Nonetheless, fake news as it has been discussed recently (e.g., Allcott and Gentzkow, 2017, Shane, 2017) seems to have gained an unprecedented level of prominence through the rise of social media. Lazer et al. define fake news as (p. 1094): “… fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent.” Fake news, in its present form, consists primarily of highly salient (if implausible) fabricated claims that are created to spread on social media. A common tactic among fake news creators is to use highly partisan political content to drive engagement.

What cognitive factors drive belief in, versus rejection of, fake news? Perhaps the most broadly accepted claim is that belief in political fake news – the category that has captured the majority of the public’s attention – is driven primarily by partisanship (Kahan, 2017, Van Bavel and Pereira, 2018). This claim is supported by pervasive effects of motivated reasoning on various forms of judgment (Haidt, 2012, Kahan, 2013, Mercier and Sperber, 2011). For example, voters are more inclined to support a preferred political candidate when presented with negative information (up to a point; Redlawsk, Civettini, & Emmerson, 2010). Individuals also forcefully debate arguments that are inconsistent with their political ideology but passively and uncritically accept arguments that support their political ideology (Strickland, Taber, & Lodge, 2011). Moreover, there is some evidence that political misconceptions are resistant to explicit corrections (Berinsky, 2017, Nyhan and Reifler, 2010; but see Ecker et al., 2017, Swire et al., 2017). Given the political nature of fake news, similar motivated reasoning effects may explain why entirely fabricated claims have received so much attention on social media. That is, individuals may be susceptible to fake news stories that are amenable to their political ideology. In addition to its support among experts (Kahan, 2017, Van Bavel and Pereira, 2018), this narrative has also been favored in media coverage of belief in fake news (e.g., Beck, 2017, Taub, 2017).

One form of the motivated reasoning account that has gained particular traction is the Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R) account, which posits that explicit deliberation causes people to preferentially believe information which aligns with their ideological identity – that is, cognitive reflection increases the propensity to engage in ideologically motivated reasoning (Kahan, 2013). By this account, deliberation exacerbates partisan differences, and people who are more analytical thinkers wind up more polarized, rather than more accurate, in their beliefs. Supporting this prediction, there is evidence that the propensity to think analytically increases political polarization in the context of climate change (Kahan et al., 2012; see also Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017), gun control (Kahan, Peters, Dawson, & Slovic, 2017; see also Ballarini and Sloman, 2017, Kahan and Peters, 2017), and selective exposure to political information (Knobloch-Westerwick, Mothes, & Polavin, 2017).

In the context of fake news and misinformation, the MS2R account predicts a positive correlation between analytic thinking and perceived accuracy of politically consistent fake news headlines (see Kahan, 2017). The MS2R account is of theoretical importance because it conflicts with an alternative broad perspective in the tradition of dual-process theories of reasoning in which analytic thinking is thought to support sound judgment (Evans, 2003, Stanovich, 2005). We will refer to this alternative account as, simply, the classical reasoning account.

According to dual-process theory, human cognition can be characterized by a distinction between autonomous, intuitive (System 1) processes and deliberative, analytic (System 2) processes (De Neys, 2012, Evans and Stanovich, 2013, Kahneman, 2011, Pennycook et al., 2015a). Consider the following problem from the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005):

A bat and ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

The problem elicits a fast, intuitive response (10 cents) that, upon reflection, is obviously wrong (if the ball cost 10 cents, the bat would have to cost $1.10 and they would total $1.20). Nonetheless, the incorrect intuitive response is typically the modal response (e.g., 65% in Pennycook, Cheyne, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2016), indicating an overall failure to engage in reflective reasoning processes (Pennycook & Ross, 2016).

It has been argued that the bat-and-ball problem – and others of its type – reflect a crucial aspect of our cognitive architecture: the willingness or propensity to think analytically (Pennycook, Fugelsang, & Koehler, 2015b). Humans are cognitive misers, in that resource-demanding cognitive processes are typically avoided (Fiske and Taylor, 2013, Stanovich, 1999, Stanovich and West, 2000). Nonetheless, some are less miserly than others and participants who do well on the CRT also perform better on rational thinking tests (Stanovich et al., 2011, Toplak et al., 2014).

This research supports the presumption, pervasive in “classical reasoning” approaches (Kohlberg, 1969, Piaget, 1932), that reasoning supports sound judgment. Indeed, a surge of recent research has broadened the support for this approach further by linking the propensity to engage deliberative reasoning processes (rather than relying on “gut feelings” or intuitions) with skepticism about epistemically suspect beliefs (Pennycook, et al., 2015b). For example, analytic thinking has been associated with religious and paranormal disbelief (Gervais and Norenzayan, 2012, Pennycook et al., 2012, Pennycook et al., 2016, Shenhav et al., 2012), acceptance of some scientific claims (e.g., evolution: Gervais, 2015; astronomy, evolution, geology, mechanics, perception, and thermodynamics: Shtulman & McCallum, 2014), rejection of conspiracy theories (Swami, Voracek, Stieger, Tran, & Furnham, 2014), and the detection of pseudo-profound bullshit (Pennycook, Cheyne, Barr, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2015).

In the context of fake news and misinformation, therefore, the classical reasoning account suggests that analytic thinking will support accurate belief formation about fake news content. Thus, in contrast to the MS2R account, the classical reasoning account predicts that analytic thinking will positively predict the ability to discern between fake and real news, regardless of whether it is consistent or inconsistent with one’s political ideology.

The question of whether analytic thinking supports or undermines fake news susceptibility has consequences for broader perspectives on dual-process theories of cognitive function. The MS2R account suggests that the typical framing of dual-process theories (in which analytic thinking supports sound judgment) may be misguided. The classical reasoning account suggests that the effects of motivated System 2 reasoning uncovered in the context of political claims may be exceptions, rather than the rule. Given that fake news is both highly partisan and plainly untrue, it represents a strong test case to compare the relative scope of these two perspectives. Does analytic reasoning help or hurt? In this paper, we investigate this question by examining the correlation between CRT performance and perceived accuracy of fake and real news headlines that are either ideologically concordant or discordant.