Fake news, Propaganda, and Blind Spot Cognitive Bias

Fake news is all around us. Especially with the resurrection of social media due to easy and cheap internet access, we have seen a surge in cases of fake news after 2015 and more so, the number of people believing in fake news has been increasing. It has been becoming more and more difficult to distinguish the instances of fake news. Though it is important to know that the news must make sense, spotting biased content and incorrect news is quite a cumbersome task. We have been discussing the credibility of a news source, however, our discussions have left out the much-required analysis of how such fake news engages the target audience and how the audience reacts to the information in a given news feed.

The most important point to be considered in this case is the personal bias of the consumer of the news. This includes how a piece of the given information is received, processed, and evaluated. One of the most common methods of how people process information received from the news is processing the information in the quickest possible manner. People, throughout their lives, tend to develop a number of shortcuts to process the immense information received on a daily basis and make their lives less complicated. These shortcuts, called heuristics, help us arrive at quick decisions by streamlining our decision-making process. In this way, heuristics is a very useful phenomenon and seemingly, not a bad thing at all. As such, without having made use of heuristics it is literally impossible to process the large amount of data we receive each day. At the negative end, heuristics lead to unintentional blind spots in the decision-making process making one engage with the received information in a peculiarly biased manner. Hence, the process of believing in fake news arises out of cognitive bias.

Cognitive biases are the glitches in the manner in which information is processed by our brains. When under bias, we are unable to process the information accurately. A number of cognitive biases come into play when it comes to the consumption of news irrespective of the fact whether the news is genuine or fake. These include:

1. Confirmation bias, wherein we tend to seek and value such information that aligns with our pre-conceived notions and beliefs and discard ideas that do not conform to our beliefs (Mercier, 2017).

2. Echo chamber effect, wherein we are exposed to only such information that coincides with our viewpoint. This causes resistance to change and reinforcement of pre-existing biases (Guess et.al., 2018).

3. Anchoring bias, wherein people consider the first piece of information about a given subject as the most reliable information. This is generally observed on social media platforms where people tend to operate in an echo chamber. Hence, people who rely on social media for the daily news feed are more likely to believe in fake news especially the ones that align with their pre-existing viewpoint (Lieder et. al., 2018).

4. The framing effect, wherein the consumers of news tend to base their decisions on the manner in which the information is presented rather than on the actual substance. This leads to weakened content-based arguments and the viewers’ decision making largely relies on sematic perceptions (Steiger & Kühberger, 2018).

5. Fluency heuristic wherein, a piece of information is valued more than the other merely because it is easier to recall. For instance, a catchy soundbite used by a professor in the middle of his lecture forces the students to remember the soundbite more clearly than the entire lecture as the latter was too lengthy and less accessible.

It is worthwhile to understand that every human being is under the influence of at least one cognitive bias. In this context, when a piece of information is served to us, we remain under the influence of these biases during the interpretation and analysis of the information. Hence, it is important that we must be aware of how these biases are shaping how the information is perceived. This awareness can be best created by testing our attitude of receiving the information and evaluating the same in the context of confirmation bias, framing effect, and other forms of cognitive biases (Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2012). For example, when we see a news story on a new scientific invention that generates invisible laser rays to cause genetic mutation in animals, we must consider whether confirmation bias has crept in when going through the headline. It may be one catchy story that might very well catch the attention of science and technology enthusiasts, and may even conform to their wishes and beliefs. Moreover, we must also consider whether the framing effect comes into play and how it influences the consumer of the news feed. Having evaluated the story based on different biases and effects, one can understand the genuineness of the news story. Though it is impossible to control the content, understanding the cognitive biases, we can understand whether a piece of information is real and reliable, or fake, or somewhere in the middle. In this manner, we can learn how to adapt to the growing influence of social media and the associated rise in fake news and how to respond to the same.

References

Bazerman, M. H., & Tenbrunsel, A. E. (2012). Blind spots: Why we fail to do what's right and what to do about it. Princeton University Press.

Guess, A., Nyhan, B., Lyons, B., & Reifler, J. (2018). Avoiding the echo chamber about echo chambers. Knight Foundation, 2.

Lieder, F., Griffiths, T. L., Huys, Q. J., & Goodman, N. D. (2018). The anchoring bias reflects rational use of cognitive resources. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 25(1), 322-349.

Mercier, H. (2017). Confirmation bias—Myside bias.

Steiger, A., & Kühberger, A. (2018). A meta-analytic re-appraisal of the framing effect. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 226(1), 45.