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The role of political devotion in sharing partisan misinformation
Link to tweet
Abstract
Online misinformation poses a significant threat toglobal challenges such as pandemics and climate change. To understand what drives individuals to share misinformation, we conducted two pre-registered experiments with conservatives and far-right supporters in the US and Spain (N = 1,609) and a neuroimaging study with far-right supporters in Spain (N = 36). Individuals who felt their personal identity was fused with their political group were more likely to share misinformation, especially around sacred moral issues (e.g., immigration and nationalism). Far-right supporters showed increased activity in brain regions associated with theory of mind in response to posts with sacred values, highlighting the social nature of misinformation sharing. Analytical thinking was unrelated to misinformation sharing around sacred values (vs. non-sacred values) and fact-checks had little or no effect, especially among hyper-partisans. We provide evidence that political devotion plays a key role in misinformation sharing and discuss practical implications of our findings.
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