The fake news phenomenon has exposed the vulnerability of individuals and societies to information manipulation in social media. We conducted two studies to understand why people believe in fake news and propose a simple IT intervention method that can help in detecting disinformation. In Study 1, we designed a laboratory experiment using behavioral and neurophysiological tools to test two competing theories in the disinformation literature. Both behavioral and neurophysiological evidence support the classical reasoning account hypotheses and reject the motivated reasoning predictions, suggesting that the lack of actively open-minded thinking (AOT) is linked to the belief in fake news. An intervention method was designed (i.e., performance feedback) that reduces individuals’ overconfidence in their ability to detect fake news and encourages more analytical thinking. In Study 2, we conducted an online survey presenting participants with their performance feedback halfway through the survey. The results show that the intervention increased participants’ performance by 14%. Our study contributes to the research on fake news by providing behavioral and neurophysiological evidence in support of the classical reasoning account. It also offers a simple and practical method that increases users’ ability to detect fake news.

假新闻现象暴露了个人和社会对社交媒体信息操纵的脆弱性。我们进行了两项研究来了解人们为什么相信假新闻，并提出了一种可以帮助检测虚假信息的简单 IT 干预方法。在研究 1 中，我们设计了一个实验室实验，使用行为和神经生理学工具来测试虚假信息文献中的两个相互竞争的理论。行为和神经生理学证据都支持经典推理假设并拒绝动机推理预测，这表明缺乏积极开放的思维 (AOT) 与相信假新闻有关。设计了一种干预方法（即 绩效反馈）可以减少个人对自己发现假新闻的能力的过度自信，并鼓励更多的分析性思维。在研究 2 中，我们进行了一项在线调查，在调查进行到一半时向参与者展示他们的表现反馈。结果表明，干预使参与者的表现提高了 14%。我们的研究通过提供支持经典推理的行为和神经生理学证据，为假新闻的研究做出了贡献。它还提供了一种简单实用的方法，可以提高用户检​​测假新闻的能力。我们的研究通过提供支持经典推理的行为和神经生理学证据，为假新闻的研究做出了贡献。它还提供了一种简单实用的方法，可以提高用户检​​测假新闻的能力。我们的研究通过提供支持经典推理的行为和神经生理学证据，为假新闻的研究做出了贡献。它还提供了一种简单实用的方法，可以提高用户检​​测假新闻的能力。