Why does fake news about vaccines spread faster than scientific facts?

Is your brain’s “motivated reasoning” making you believe online lies?

Understand the four cognitive mechanisms behind misinformation spread. Learn Paul Thagard’s strategies for using “critical communicating” and motivational interviewing to stop the viral spread of falsehoods. Don’t let cognitive bias fool you—read on to master the critical thinking skills needed to spot fake news and protect your community from dangerous lies.

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Ubiquitous misinformation, rumors, hoaxes, mistakes, and lies weaken popular understanding of critical issues. New communication technologies — particularly social media — help distortions and lies spread wider and faster, playing havoc with politics, healthcare, science, and other functions of modern society. University of Waterloo philosophy professor Paul Thagard explores how people produce and share information and how mistakes or malice undermine the process. He describes the cognitive mechanisms involved in generating and spreading information, shows how they can break down, and prescribes strategies for identifying, confronting, and neutralizing misinformation.

Take-Aways

• Misinformation threatens almost every human activity.
• Information springs from four cognitive and societal mechanisms.
• Misinformation arises from breakdowns in societal mechanisms, cognitive biases, or deliberate falsehoods.
• Sometimes, people make up things for their own purposes and then spread their lies, creating misinformation.
• Fight misinformation by identifying and repairing broken information mechanisms.
• Take steps to counter misinformation.
• Create personal bulwarks against misinformation by becoming a more savvy consumer.

Summary

Misinformation threatens almost every human activity.

The spread of misinformation is not a new problem, but innovations in communication technology have intensified its dangers by streamlining its transmission. A social media post can spread a rumor, lie, or hoax around the world in seconds.

“Dealing with humanity’s major problems requires dealing with misinformation.”

In the past few years, society has dealt with the sometimes deadly consequences of misinformation about a variety of crucial subjects, including Covid-19 vaccines, the integrity of the 2020 US presidential election, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Information springs from four cognitive and societal mechanisms.

Information emerges from this quartet of cognitive and social functions:

1. “Acquisition” — This encompasses two processes, “collecting” and “representing.” People can gather information directly through their senses, or with instruments such as telescopes or scales, or through scientific experiments. Those who have information can keep it to themselves, internally, or share it externally through the spoken or written word or with images.
2. “Inference” — This is the process of “evaluating” and “transforming” information. People examine information to determine if it’s accurate and has practical significance. For example, the results of an experiment that accurately shows that a new medicine works would have immediate practical importance. People transform a text or image that represents information by using it as a basis for generating further representations. For example, a doctor who suggests that a patient has diabetes is transforming two representations, one about the disease and the other about the patient’s symptoms, to generate a new representation: the diagnosis.
3. “Memory” — To use information, people must be able to store and retrieve it. The most basic way to store information is as a memory in your brain. However, memories are not dependable; recollections fade and biases and emotions distort them. Memory can reshape or misplace information. The brain is selective about which memories it stores for the long term. And, it is biased toward information that elicits strong emotions, just as it tends to turn away from information that contradicts your current beliefs. Humanity thus developed “social memory” — the process of storing and sharing information as writing, images, and computer data.
4. “Spread” — People typically get most of their information from other people. They “transmit” and “receive” information by sharing representations through the written or spoken word and electronic media.

Misinformation arises from breakdowns in societal mechanisms, cognitive biases, or deliberate falsehoods.

When people acquire information, faulty observations and representations can generate misinformation. People can make mistakes, even when directly observing an object or event. To consider one factor, a lot of a person’s perception process takes place in the brain and depends on cues from the outside world. Light levels and other conditions can limit the cues the brain can perceive or process. The brain can fall prey to optical illusions, and certain medical conditions or drugs can distort that input, for instance, by producing hallucinations.

Acquisition mistakes also can arise from faulty or improperly adjusted instruments, poorly designed experiments, or carelessly recorded data, as well as the influence of cognitive biases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, flawed experiments produced evidence suggesting that the drug ivermectin might slow or stop the virus. Subsequent reviews discounted these findings, but misinformation regarding the drug spread quickly and widely.

“Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.” (US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy)

Emotions and cognitive biases can prompt people to share inaccurate or insignificant information and can distort the inferences they draw from the information they learn. For example, consider confirmation bias, the thought pattern that makes people more likely to accept evidence that supports their existing beliefs than to credit evidence that contradicts what they already believe. Motivated reasoning, in which people prioritize evidence that supports their goals, is another cognitive bias. During the COVID-19 pandemic, politicians indulged in motivated reasoning by whitewashing the pandemic’s dangers.

Strong feelings also affect inference. For example, hypochondriacs often leap to the most frightening explanation of a symptom. People give greater weight to information that stirs strong emotions because such feelings can be helpful: fear alerts you to danger or disgust might help you avoid spoiled food.

“The crucial distinction between real information and misinformation assumes the existence of reality independent of people’s thoughts about it.”

Social memory systems, such as the news media, are subject to breakdowns depending on the beliefs of those who control them. For example, the Nazis destroyed books that conflicted with their ideology.

Sometimes, people make up things for their own purposes and then spread their lies, creating misinformation.

The mechanisms governing the spread of information can break down anywhere along the chain of senders and receivers, threatening the integrity of the information.

Those who pass along information don’t always vet it for accuracy and significance, and sometimes people outright lie or fabricate information. The pandemic saw a proliferation of invented “facts,” including assertions that COVID was a hoax, that 5G cellphone technology produced COVID symptoms, and that COVID vaccines were dangerous.

People who release and spread false representations often rely on institutions that generate data designed from the outset to support spurious claims. For instance, oil companies have employed research firms to produce reports that support the companies’ efforts to avoid government environmental regulations. Such institutions aim to sow doubt about prevailing scientific interpretations of existing data.

“The easiest way to generate misinformation is to ignore reality altogether and just make stuff up.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people had to make critical decisions about their work and social activities based on vast amounts of stored data concerning the disease’s cause, treatment, and prevention. They had to vet the reliability of information and determine if they remembered it accurately. They also needed to ask themselves if they had prioritized significant facts or if they might be incorrectly conflating information from separate reports.

In the past, communication technology’s limits impeded how fast and how far misinformation could spread. When barriers to communication were stronger, people were less likely to share information without checking its accuracy or assessing its relevance. Now, however, fast, convenient social media spreads improperly vetted material to millions of people in seconds, and people tend to believe the information they hear over and over.

“People confuse repetition with evidence.”

The ease with which one can share true or untrue material has weakened individuals’ self-restraint, with the result that social media such as Facebook, X (Twitter), and YouTube serve as vectors for huge amounts of misinformation on issues such as COVID-19, climate change, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Fight misinformation by identifying and repairing broken information mechanisms.

The antidote to misinformation is “reinformation,” which calls for identifying where broken mechanisms have generated false misinformation and then repairing the breach to reclaim accurate, factual information.

Critical thinking helps you identify and stop misinformation. When a source reports information, use your critical-thinking skills to identify any logical inconsistencies and biases that call the data’s accuracy into question.

Critical thinking can expand beyond the individual level to the more wide-reaching concept of “critical communicating.” This encompasses a more careful approach to sharing information on social media because aware senders would pause to determine the information’s accuracy and its value to likely recipients. Recipients should evaluate the sender and his or her possible motivations before deciding to forward the message to other people. Colleges offer courses in critical thinking; high schools should offer them as well.

“The battle against misinformation continues, not just in the minds of individuals but also in much broader social and political contexts.”

Other strategies can help stem the torrent of misinformation. For example, “motivational interviewing” can help you uncover someone’s “motivational reasoning” for sharing certain information. Such reasoning increasingly drives misinformation, due to these factors.

• The rise of authoritarian political leaders — Such politicians evaluate information based almost solely on its personal usefulness to them.
• The abandonment of traditional journalistic standards — In some countries, state-controlled media report only information that benefits political leaders.
• The rise of social media — Sites such as Facebook, X (Twitter), and TikTok enable users to spread any information they find exciting, regardless of its accuracy. Algorithms further the problem by highlighting the types of information that are likely to spread quickly.

Motivational interviewing uses empathetic, non-confrontational questioning to explore why a person might believe misinformation. Critical thinking techniques can refute mistaken ideas, but they seldom address the assumptions and desires underlying these mistakes.

Motivational interviewing focuses on revealing the goals that lead someone to sustain inaccurate beliefs. In some cases, motivational interviewing can help interviewees recognize that their beliefs don’t support their goals. Or, people may realize that their revealed motives conflict with their values. This technique is less effective with people who are dogmatic about their beliefs or those who have powerful economic or social motivations for clinging to a belief.

Take steps to counter misinformation.

Families, community groups, and formal institutions such as schools, businesses, and government agencies should prioritize combatting the spread of misinformation.

“Changing minds is as much about emotional change as it is about belief revision.”

When social media users spread dangerous misinformation on topics such as the pandemic or climate change, those who are fighting against such misleading falsities believe governments should impose regulations. So far, governments remain relatively hands-off regarding regulating social media compared with how they oversee traditional media outlets. New approaches could include these practices.

• Using antitrust statutes to challenge the monopolistic status of social media companies.
• Holding such companies liable for their users’ online activity.
• Requiring social media companies to design algorithms that highlight content based on its accuracy rather than its emotional appeal.
• Establishing national and international agencies to monitor dangerous online activity.

Create personal bulwarks against misinformation by becoming a more savvy consumer.

Becoming a wiser consumer of information requires exercising critical thinking, carefully weighing what you see, and thinking about how you evaluate it.

“Perception, systematic observation, instruments, and experiments are all generally reliable mechanisms of collecting information about the world. But…each can fail in identifiable ways that generate misinformation.”

When you encounter new information, examine it in light of these criteria.

1. Acquisition — Determine if the information is from a reliable source. Examine how the source represents the information. A statement that lacks evidentiary support should arouse suspicion. Evaluate any photographic or video evidence. Institutions such as the Washington Post, the CBC, and bellingcat.com offer resources for detecting fake images and videos.
2. Inference — When analyzing a news report, determine if the news organization adheres to journalistic standards such as verifying facts and citing sources. Determine if the organization has political or philosophical motives for falsifying or slanting its reporting.
3. Memory — Determine if the relevant storage and retrieval systems are likely to save only accurate information. Do they filter out fake data? Keep in mind that social media has lax standards and not all news organizations adhere to established journalistic principles.
4. Spread — Examine the motivations of those relaying information, and check their past record for accuracy.

About the Author

Paul Thagard, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of Waterloo, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has written numerous books including Conceptual Revolutions and Bots and Beasts: What Makes Machines, Animals, and People Smart?