Overconfidence in detecting false news

A study of two surveys involving 8,285 US participants finds that around three-quarters of respondents overestimated their ability to distinguish between legitimate and false news headlines, and that people who were overconfident in their news judgments on legitimate versus false news were more likely to visit untrustworthy websites and to like or share false content, potentially contributing to the spread of false information via social media, according to the authors.

###

Article #20-19527: “Overconfidence in news judgments is associated with false news susceptibility,” by Benjamin A. Lyons, Jacob M. Montgomery, Andrew M. Guess, Brendan Nyhan, and Jason Reifler.

MEDIA CONTACT: Benjamin A. Lyons, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT; tel: 217-801-1442; email:

[email protected]