The spread of online misinformation is a growing societal problem, making it essential to understand which factors influence individuals’ decisions to share information on social media (Schünemann, 2022). In an online experiment, we manipulated the trustworthiness of the alleged source of 41 fact-checked news headlines (e.g., AfD zahlt Demo-Teilnehmern Geld). We presented the statements as coming either from one of three trustworthy websites taken from Behre et al. (2023; e.g., tagesschau.de) or from a fictitious news site, which people should view with more scepticism (e.g., tagesaktuell.de). Each headline was displayed for 5500ms. 90 participants indicated whether they would share the respective headline or not. They were more likely to share messages perceived as coming from a trustworthy source than from fictitious sources (t(89)=2.45, p=.008; d=.258). Using only headlines which were pre-rated as high (n=12) or low (n=6) in emotionality, an ANOVA also revealed a main effect of emotionality: Emotional headlines were more likely to be shared than less emotional statements (F(1,89)=43.41, p<.001, η²=.127), but the interaction between source and emotionality was not significant. Despite some open methodological challenges, we hold that experimental psychology can play an important role in identifying factors which contribute to the spread of misinformation.
Behre et al. (2023). Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023. https://doi.org/10.21241/ssoar.86851
Schünemann (2022). A threat to democracies? An overview of theoretical approaches and empirical measurements for studying the effects of disinformation. Cyber Security Politics. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003110224-4