Jennifer Le, Rebecca Norton

This study merges distinct areas of research to examine the impact of fake news content warnings, critical thinking skills, political affiliation, and individual attitudes about the issues. We measured baseline attitudes toward various social issues within the US (e.g., providing universal healthcare, using affirmative action programs in colleges, and eliminating the reliance on fossil fuels to reduce climate change). Then all participants were exposed to four fake news stories copied from a reliable fact-checking website (www.snopes.com). Each story was presented in a traditional social media layout, with a large print headline and related photo followed by a short summary of the news story. Of the four stories that each participant read, two had a conservative bias and the other two had a liberal slant. The more conservative false headlines included a story from Breitbart.com discussing a university’s affirmative action plan to decrease male hiring and a story from Worldnewsdesk.com talking about NASA data showing that climate change is not due to human behavior. The more liberal fake stories included a headline from Thedailybeast.com about then-president Trump signing tax cuts for the wealthy but not renewing the children’s health insurance program and a story from Yournewswire.com showing a link between increased fracking in Hawaii and the surge in volcanic activity. At the bottom of each story, half of the participants saw a bright yellow statement warning that the story had been “Disputed by 3^rd party Fact Checkers.” Following each story, participants were asked to evaluate how useful and interesting the story was, how likely they were to share the story with friends, and how trustworthy, accurate, and credible they found the story to be. After reading all four stories and reacting to each, participants completed a three-item critical thinking task consisting of logic questions. Then participants completed demographic items asking for their gender, age, and political affiliation. Finally, all participants rated themselves on a 5-point scale ranging from “very conservative” to “very liberal” regarding environmental, economic, and social political issues. There was not a consistent effect of the fake news warnings and sometimes they unexpectedly increased the likelihood of sharing a story. The impact of warnings were inconsistent and the critical-thinking test was not associated with any outcomes. Performance on the critical-thinking test was not significantly associated with any of these outcomes, in contrast to past findings. Political attitudes had a stronger impact than group affiliation.