How credulous are we when engaging information on social media? Addressing this question, this article aims to understand how individuals’ epistemic vigilance, a set of cognitive mechanisms that comprise our system of precaution in social interactions, may operate and fall short. Reporting findings from two survey experiments (Study 1, N = 413; Study 2, N = 392), we show that participants tended to be skeptical toward social media news, were reasonably successful in identifying true news, and reported a tendency to share true rather than false news. In one study, social endorsement enticed a higher accuracy rating of news posts. In both studies, people judged attitudinally congruent news posts as being more accurate and reported a higher likelihood to share them. Individuals’ propensity to reflective thinking measured by cognitive reflection test potentially operated as a restraint on sharing inaccurate information and bolstered veracity anchoring in their information engagement.

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事实很难获得：在社交媒体上辨别和分享事实信息

当我们在社交媒体上获取信息时，我们有多容易轻信？针对这个问题，本文旨在了解个人的认知警惕性（构成我们社会互动预防系统的一组认知机制）如何运作和不足。报告两项调查实验的结果（研究 1，N = 413；研究 2，N = 392），我们表明参与者往往对社交媒体新闻持怀疑态度，在识别真实新闻方面相当成功，并报告了分享真实新闻的倾向而不是虚假消息。在一项研究中，社会认可可以提高新闻帖子的准确性。在这两项研究中，人们认为态度一致的新闻帖子更准确，并且分享这些新闻的可能性更高。