Abstract

Why would people share news they think might not be accurate? We identify a factor that, alongside accuracy, drives the sharing of true and fake news: the ‘interestingness-if-true’ of a piece of news. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 904), participants were presented with a series of true and fake news, and asked to rate the accuracy of the news, how interesting the news would be if it were true, and how likely they would be to share it. Participants were more willing to share news they found more interesting-if-true, as well as news they deemed more accurate. They deemed fake news less accurate but more interesting-if-true than true news, and were more likely to share true news than fake news. As expected, interestingness-if-true differed from interestingness and accuracy, and had good face validity. Higher trust in mass media was associated with a greater ability to discern true from fake news, and participants rated as more accurate news that they had already been exposed to (especially for true news). We argue that people may not share news of questionable accuracy by mistake, but instead because the news has qualities that compensate for its potential inaccuracy, such as being interesting-if-true.

摘要

为什么人们会分享他们认为可能不准确的新闻？我们确定了一个与准确性一起推动真假新闻共享的因素：一条新闻的“如果为真则有趣”。在三个预先注册的实验中（N = 904），参与者被呈现一系列真假新闻，并被要求评价新闻的准确性，如果新闻是真实的，它会有多有趣，以及他们分享它的可能性有多大。参与者更愿意分享他们认为更有趣（如果为真）的新闻，以及他们认为更准确的新闻。他们认为假新闻不那么准确，但比真实新闻更有趣，并且比假新闻更有可能分享真实新闻。正如预期的那样，interestness-if-true 不同于有趣性和准确性，并且具有良好的面部效度。对大众媒体的更高信任与更大的辨别真假新闻的能力有关，参与者认为他们已经接触过的新闻更准确（尤其是真实新闻）。