How good are people at spotting fake news?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-02-21 21:00

International

Image by u_5785qxtfen from Pixabay

How good are people at judging the veracity of news? A research team looked at data from publications from 40 countries across six continents – with participants mostly from Europe and the United States. Participants rated the accuracy of over 2,000 news items, and the team found people were able to rate true news as more accurate than false news. In particular, people were better at rating false news as false, than they were at rating true news as true – which researchers say means that participants were able to discern true from false news and erred on the side of scepticism. The team says that when people fall for false news, it may be because they lack the motivation to use their discernment skills, or may apply their skills selectively, and suggest that instead of teaching people how to spot false news, it might be better to target their motivations and incentives, as well as the environment in which they encounter news (such as how social media is set up). The findings lend support to crowdsourced fact-checking initiatives, the authors add.

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research Springer Nature, Web page The URL will go live after the embargo lifts.

Journal/
conference: Nature Human Behaviour

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: PSL University, France

Funder: We thank A. Allard, H. Mercier, G. Pennycook, A. Modirrousta-Galian and B. Tappin for their valuable feedback on earlier versions of the manuscript. J.P. received funding from SCALUP ANR grant ANR- 21-CE28-0016-01. S.A. received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 883121). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript. Open access funding provided by University of Zurich.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.