The social media and WhatsApp are spreading of rampant disinformation backing the side of anti-Israel propogandists and those praising Hamas. Why do people believe disinformation and embrace blatant falsehoods in the first place – and why do many persist in their beliefs when confronted with clear refutation?
Psychological research has identified several contributing factors including personality characteristics, social contexts, affect, and cognition.
Prof. Ruth Mayo of the psychology department in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU) Faculty of Social Sciences offers a fresh perspective on the cognitive mindsets influencing our susceptibility to false information. Her comprehensive review challenges the prevailing belief that trust or distrust alone is the answer in combating disinformation.
Confronting disinformation
“When it comes to confronting disinformation, solely relying on trust or distrust mindsets isn't the most effective approach. While trust often leads to the acceptance of false information and distrust can act as a shield against it, both mindsets have limitations. The proposal is for an alternative Cartesian mindset that encourages people to critically evaluate information for accuracy without automatically accepting or rejecting it. This evaluative approach has shown promise in distinguishing between true and false information, offering a more effective strategy for combating disinformation,” she said.
She has just published her findings under the title “Trust or Distrust? Neither! The Right Mindset for Confronting Disinformation” in the journal Current Opinion in Psychology.
Offering a nuanced exploration of how mindsets impact our beliefs and responses to information, Mayo delved into the pervasive truth bias, a predisposition to accept information as true, and its relevance in the context of trust. This bias, often considered the root cause of embracing disinformation, is contextual and subject to change based on mindset.
“While trust is commonly viewed as the default mindset leading to belief in disinformation, our review highlights that mindsets – either trust or distrust – aren’t absolute. They are highly contextual,” she declared. The review emphasized that while a distrust mindset can act as a shield against uncritical acceptance of disinformation, it paradoxically leads individuals to embrace alternative, potentially false narratives. This dual effect underscores the limitations of solely relying on trust or distrust mindsets in addressing disinformation.
"Both trust and distrust mindsets present limitations when dealing with disinformation. The answer lies in a different approach: the Cartesian mindset,” she continued..
The Cartesian mindset that she proposed advocates for a pause before automatically accepting or rejecting information, urging individuals to critically evaluate its accuracy. This evaluative approach has shown promise in distinguishing between true and false information, reducing the propagation of disinformation, and promoting accurate evaluation without a predisposition to trust or distrust. “We advocate for an evaluative mindset that prioritizes accuracy over the automatic classification of information as true or false. It's about considering the content critically.”
The implications of her study, she concluded, “stretch beyond cognitive psychology, offering a novel framework for combating disinformation It paves the way for strategies and interventions aimed at cultivating an evaluative mindset as a universally effective approach to information processing.”