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There's a good article in the Washington Post today that chats to some psychologists about why it is that conservatives seem to fall for fake news more than liberals. Some snippets:
A personality trait, not discussed in the article, that has long been known to be a major difference between liberals and conservatives, is openness to experience. This is one of the "big 5" personality traits (decades of study have repeatedly identified 5 core personality traits), and is essentially a measure of how open-minded a person is and how much they are interested in learning more about themselves and the world around them. It correlates with intelligence, with curiosity, with being politically liberal, and is negatively correlated with religion.
What it all seems to boil down to is that on the whole conservatives tend not to use as much critical thinking as liberals do. Liberals are typically interested in hearing new ideas and evaluating them critically to determine their plausibility, while conservatives are typically interested in hearing only things that confirm their existing views and they tend not to apply much critical thinking to them.
[O]ne fake news creator told NPR, "We've tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out."
A Buzzfeed analysis found that three main conservative Facebook pages were roughly twice as likely as three leading liberal Facebook pages to publish fake or misleading information.
...a number of personality traits are strongly correlated with conservatism. One in particular -- a so-called "need for cognition" -- speaks to why fake news creators have found a receptive audience among conservatives. "Need for cognition" is measured by assessing people's agreement with statements like, "I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours" or "thinking is not my idea of fun." A measurement of people's affinity for critical thinking, in short. [There is] a "significant, negative" association between need for cognition and right-wing orientation. ...In other words, liberals were slightly more predisposed to think critically than conservatives. ...conservatives "are less reflective in information processing, especially when information is consistent with [their] own worldviews."
[One scientist] found a significant correlation between support for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Donald Trump and [a] favorable assessment of ...[nonsensical and] meaningless statements. The relationship was the strongest for Cruz supporters in his sample. Conversely, he found no significant relationship between support for Democratic candidates and susceptibility to the nonsensical sentences. ...[he] also found that individuals who identified as more conservative were more likely to be duped by nonsense than liberals.
[He believes] conservatives may be perfectly able to do the kind of critical thinking and cognitive exploration that would lead them to be more skeptical of nonsense and fake news -- they just choose not to, preferring instead to seek out information that allows them to make quick decisions that reinforce their existing views.
The research into personality traits, combined with the reports on the rise of fake news within the conservative internet, suggests that there are measurable, objective differences in how liberals and conservatives view the world -- and that savvy snake oil salesmen can exploit those differences for money and recognition.
A Buzzfeed analysis found that three main conservative Facebook pages were roughly twice as likely as three leading liberal Facebook pages to publish fake or misleading information.
...a number of personality traits are strongly correlated with conservatism. One in particular -- a so-called "need for cognition" -- speaks to why fake news creators have found a receptive audience among conservatives. "Need for cognition" is measured by assessing people's agreement with statements like, "I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours" or "thinking is not my idea of fun." A measurement of people's affinity for critical thinking, in short. [There is] a "significant, negative" association between need for cognition and right-wing orientation. ...In other words, liberals were slightly more predisposed to think critically than conservatives. ...conservatives "are less reflective in information processing, especially when information is consistent with [their] own worldviews."
[One scientist] found a significant correlation between support for Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Donald Trump and [a] favorable assessment of ...[nonsensical and] meaningless statements. The relationship was the strongest for Cruz supporters in his sample. Conversely, he found no significant relationship between support for Democratic candidates and susceptibility to the nonsensical sentences. ...[he] also found that individuals who identified as more conservative were more likely to be duped by nonsense than liberals.
[He believes] conservatives may be perfectly able to do the kind of critical thinking and cognitive exploration that would lead them to be more skeptical of nonsense and fake news -- they just choose not to, preferring instead to seek out information that allows them to make quick decisions that reinforce their existing views.
The research into personality traits, combined with the reports on the rise of fake news within the conservative internet, suggests that there are measurable, objective differences in how liberals and conservatives view the world -- and that savvy snake oil salesmen can exploit those differences for money and recognition.
A personality trait, not discussed in the article, that has long been known to be a major difference between liberals and conservatives, is openness to experience. This is one of the "big 5" personality traits (decades of study have repeatedly identified 5 core personality traits), and is essentially a measure of how open-minded a person is and how much they are interested in learning more about themselves and the world around them. It correlates with intelligence, with curiosity, with being politically liberal, and is negatively correlated with religion.
What it all seems to boil down to is that on the whole conservatives tend not to use as much critical thinking as liberals do. Liberals are typically interested in hearing new ideas and evaluating them critically to determine their plausibility, while conservatives are typically interested in hearing only things that confirm their existing views and they tend not to apply much critical thinking to them.
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