Why Humans Are So Difficult to Detect Fake News?

The recent studies (Frank and Feeley, 2003) and (Frank et al, 2004) shows that Human actually bad at judging whether some statements, articles or news is fake or not, in brief human are bad at detecting lie. In the first research which is the participant is a student from Rutgers University, it shows that only 54% accuracy rates, it shows that human slightly higher than the probability to guess between lie or truth. In the second research with participant from law enforcement personnel, witness credibility assessment experts show only slightly higher than the first research experiment which is from student participation.

Study conducted by (Qiu et al, 2017) found that one of the factors that made fake news widely spread was because of the limitations of the human brain in receiving information. The study shows that when someone receives an overloaded new information, they tend to rely on a handling mechanism that is not appropriate to distinguish a good or bad news, and finally choose a news that is popular and does not pay attention to the quality aspects of the news. Another research (Keersmaecker and Roets, 2017) find out how someone adjusts their attitude after knowing the important information they receive is incorrect information, and also to determine the extent to which cognitive abilities influence the evaluation of information obtained. The subject of this study was presented on a negative information about someone, after that was given an explanation that the negative information turned out to be wrong.

The results of the research show that a person with low cognitive abilities, less responsive (lack of response) to correct information correction, exposure to old information that is wrong has a strong influence on them. Specifically, when individuals with low cognitive abilities know that their attitudes toward the target audience (in this case the person being reported) are based in part on incorrect negative information, they adjust their evaluations to the target, but the numbers are smaller than individuals with high cognitive abilities. Individuals with low cognitive abilities who evaluate the target are still more negative than evaluating individuals who do not receive any information. Individuals with high cognitive abilities make more appropriate attitudes after knowing that the negative information provided is wrong.

Why us as a human cannot separating between fake news and true news?

Because the human brain processes information in a biased way. There are many theories that suggest human bias tendencies (Hutson, 2017). One of them is what evolutionary psychologists call “positive bias” (Forgas, 2018), where the brain is designed to assume that most people act in an honest and sincere way. Positive bias, besides allowing us to be preferred by others, also makes the threshold of acceptance lower or not critical, so it is easier to believe in a lie. Of course, positive bias does not apply continuously because we only apply it to people who are known or worthy of us. There are also times when a person is aware, even if only intuitively, that other people are manipulating it for personal purposes.

Because, every human being has a fear of ignorance. In addition, a Nobel winner, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, in his lecture article (Kahneman, 2013), he said that a human had evolved with two concepts of thought, namely the first intuitive system of thought like our ancestors, and the second, analytic and more rational system of thought. Another study from Paul Ekman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, San Francisco, even though human is able to think rationally, if the source is a known person, someone can still be easily deceived because of a desire to believe to the person we know personally or close to us. Even to give a second chance (Ekman, 2017). This desire factor refers to a psychological construction called “cognitive dissonance”, that is when you convince yourself to believe even if it is not true on things you want to believe, and ignore facts that you do not want to believe.

We tend to trust people we know. This means that the more we see people close to us talking about an opinion, the more we believe the truth of that opinion. Even though the people who close to us are not experts, that does not affect our level of trust. When the statement is then relied repeatedly, for example, through a television program, share it in social media, this will lead to the illusion that the opinion is popular and more acceptable than the fact. And in the end, we will believe it as a truth.

There are other theories that explain why people are easily lied to. First, confirmation bias (Hesma, 2015). That is, the action seeks justification to confirm the belief, by ignoring (valid) information that is contradictory and instead chooses questionable information. Confirmation bias was found in one study as a trigger for hoax news. Second, “cognitive misers” or cognitive misers (Robson, 2016), which describe our brains prefer to trust intuition rather than analysis as an instant way without hassle. A well-known example of this theory is a condition called “the illusion of Moses” summed up based on survey questions:

“How many types of animals did Moses bring to his ark?”

Illusion Moses explained that we are so easy to ignore the details of a statement, because there are other things that are considered more interesting. About 10–50 percent of the people surveyed failed to realize that the one who owned the ark was Noah, not Moses. So, even though we know we have to trace facts and evidence, we still use feelings based on self-assessment of what is right and wrong.

This deceptive effect of the illusion of Moses, even though at first it might have raised doubts, would be believed to be absolute truth when repeated. Besides the explanation above, there are many factors that make us easier to deceive. Mood for example, can affect the way we process lies (Forgas and East, 2008). People who are happy are even more reckless than people who are angry when lied to. Negative moods help us be more focused and careful in choosing information. Then, people who feel smarter than others also tend to be more easily lied to. The reason, because they feel they have more knowledge, so they tend to be reluctant to pay attention to the facts.

By getting the fact that humans are bad detectors for fake news. Fake news creators utilize the goodness of humans who have the nature of empathy and rely on emotions. In the end, we cannot rely on ourselves to detect fake news as we can easily be deceived by lies.

References

Ekman, D. K. (2017, December 21). Opinion | The Science of ‘Inside Out’.

Frank, M. G., & Feeley, T. H. (2003). To Catch a Liar: Challenges for Research in Lie Detection Training.

Frank, M. G., Feeley, T. H., Paolantonio, N., & Servoss, T. J. (2004). Individual and Small Group Accuracy in Judging Truthful and Deceptive Communication.

Forgas, J. P. (2018, December 10). Why are some people more gullible than others?.

Forgas, J. P., & East, R. (2008). On being happy and gullible: Mood effects on skepticism and the detection of deception.

Hutson, M. (2017, April 04). Living a Lie: We Deceive Ourselves to Better Deceive Others.

Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: Mapping bounded rationality.

Keersmaecker, J. D., & Roets, A. (2017). ‘Fake news’: Incorrect, but hard to correct. The role of cognitive ability on the impact of false information on social impressions.

Qiu, X., Oliveira, D. F., Shirazi, A. S., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2017). Limited individual attention and online virality of low-quality information.

Robson, D. (2016, March 24). Future — Why are people so incredibly gullible?