The Perils of Overconfidence: Consuming, Sharing and Believing False News

• In Event: I Second That Emotion: Perceptions & Emotions in Political Communication

Abstract

We use pre-registered analyses of three national surveys (N = 10,004) to examine perceptions of ability to discern false news, behavioral measures of actual ability, and actual media consumption using web traffic data. We find Americans consistently perceive themselves to be better than average at detecting false news. While perceived ability increases with actual ability, those who perform worst also overrate their ability the most. Most troublingly, though, greater overconfidence is associated with actual false news consumption. Overconfidence is also associated with intentions to share false news stories, belief in topical misperceptions, distrust of mainstream media, and higher trust in information seen on Facebook. This suggests that some individuals are simultaneously more likely to be exposed to and believe false stories, less able to discriminate between false and mainstream stories, and yet more likely to trust their own assessments and spread news. Taken together, we argue that overconfidence may be a crucial factor for explaining how false and low-quality information spreads via social media.

Authors

• Andy Guess, Princeton University

• Ben Lyons, University of Exeter

• Jason A. Reifler, University of Exeter

• Jacob M. Montgomery, Washington University in St. Louis

• Brendan Nyhan, Dartmouth College