From a range of political conspiracy theories to COVID-19 cures, we are living in a time of significant misinformation. Increasingly, people appear willing to live by āfactsā that best suit their own viewpoints, making it difficult to determine whatās true and whatās false.
, assistant professor of psychology and human development at Peabody College, studies how people learn new information, and how to mitigate the effects of false information.
āWhatās different now is how quickly and how far misinformation can spread,ā Fazio says. āParticularly with COVID-19, there is a lack of good, truthful information because scientists donāt yet have all the answers. Thatās a place where misinformation can really breed.ā
Though most of us believe we can identify false or misleading information, our brains often use āshortcutsā to fool us, Fazio says. āAs long as information is good enough and generally fits with what weāre expecting to hear, we donāt necessarily notice if there is an error.ā
Fazio says one way this happens is through knowledge neglect, where we may have the correct knowledge in our heads but fail to use that knowledge in the moment. Prior research also demonstrates that people often use unreliable cues, like repetition, to judge truth rather than more accurate cues, such as their prior knowledge or the source of the information.
In a recent study Fazio conducted with 91ĢĘ²®»¢ undergraduates, students were more likely to agree with blatantly wrong statementsāsuch as, āThe part of the plant that grows underground is the stemāāwhen they had been repeated.
āWhen researchers talk about living in a post-truth world, they mean living in a society that doesnāt value the truth anymore, where people can lie without consequences and thereās no effort to get the correct information out there,ā Fazio says. āI donāt think weāre there yet. I think Americans do value the truth, they value accuracy, and they want to see accurate information.ā
Here are a few tips from Fazio to avoid knowledge neglect and spreading misinformation.
1. Donāt trust your gut.
If reading something gives you an emotional reaction, thatās when you should stop to think about whether itās true or false. āIf you think, āthis is so great, I canāt wait for someone else to see it,ā thatās your time to pause,ā says Fazio. Stop and ask, where does it come from? Is the source reputable? āOne of the best things you can do to combat misinformation is to pause and think about what youāre reading rather than relying on your gut instinct.ā
2. Google it.
Grab the text of a headline or a few words from a social media post and enter it into Google to see what pops up. āA lot of times you see either debunking of information or verification that itās real,ā says Fazio. āIf itās a real news article, there should be multiple recognizable news sources reporting that same information.ā
3. Seeing is not believing.
Manipulating images on social media and websites is one of the most prevalent forms of misinformation. However, readers can use search engines to determine an imageās legitimacy by checking to see if it has been posted before. āThese images can be detected easily,ā Fazio says. āAnd in the future, it could be as simple as social media platforms keeping a database of these habitually reused images and labeling them as such.ā
4. Read before sharing (or commenting).
Donāt share stories without reading them first, Fazio suggests, adding that we all can play a role in improving the quality of information available online. āThere are a lot of forces at play that donāt always make it easy to discern what is true,ā she says, ābut we all have a responsibility to promote accurate information online.ā