Emotions impact our reaction to news, but they don’t necessarily make us more susceptible to misinformation, a new study shows. This research from the Complexity Science Hub explores the nuanced role emotions play in discernment between real and fake news.
A new study from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), Europe’s leading research center studying complex systems, has upended the widely held belief that strong emotions lead to a greater vulnerability to misinformation. According to the study, emotions are, in fact, crucial instruments for interpreting the world and making decisions.
“They are part of intelligent human behavior,” lead author Hannah Metzler, a neuroscientist and psychologist at CSH, said in a news release.
The research, published in Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, provides a nuanced perspective on how emotions interact with our ability to judge the veracity of news.
Metzler underscores the importance of considering a variety of factors influencing emotional responses, such as pre-existing emotions, news content and trust in news sources.
“When thinking about the emotions of someone who reads a false news headline, and asking if the emotion will make it more likely to believe the news, it matters why they are angry: for example, because they had a fight with their partner, or because the content of the news headline made them feel angry,” added Metzler.
Investigating Mood and Emotion
Metzler and her team conducted an experimental study involving 422 Austrian participants during a critical phase of the COVID-19 pandemic when vaccines were being rolled out.
The participants were shown various news headlines accompanied by images and were asked to assess their accuracy, while also reporting their emotional responses.
Revealing Results
The findings were surprising. Contrary to the assumption that emotions impair judgment, the study found no significant relationship between participants’ prior emotional states and their ability to distinguish between real and false news.
“We found no significant relationship between participants’ emotional state throughout the last days before viewing news items and their ability to tell apart real from false news,” Metzler added. “A common assumption is that people get more susceptible to false news when they feel anxious, such as at the start of a pandemic. But our results contradict the simple idea that feeling emotions always make people less rational, regardless of what the source, or the reason, for the emotion is — in this case, any events in the person’s life before they read the news.”
The Critical Role of Emotional Response
However, the emotions triggered by the news content were influential.
False news, particularly related to COVID-19 topics like vaccine safety and PCR testing, elicited more anger and less joy compared to real news. Interestingly, those who felt anger in response to false news were more likely to correctly identify it as false.
These participants frequently expressed frustration with terms like “bullshit,” “nonsense” and “fake news.”
The study also highlighted that people’s emotional reactions to news were often aligned with their pre-existing beliefs about COVID-19. Individuals with fewer misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines tended to feel angrier at false news and less angry at real news, suggesting that emotions helped focus attention on information consistent with their existing knowledge.
Emotions and Rationality
“Our observations underline the notion that individuals interpret news in a way that aligns with their pre-existing beliefs,” concluded Metzler. “Emotions may play a role in directing attention towards information that could be relevant for us. So emotions don’t simply make us more stupid, but give us important social information, like whether we agree with someone or not.”
Metzler cautions that the emotions reported in an online survey do not fully replicate real-world experiences. People generally encounter news in more dynamic and emotionally intense environments, such as social media. Metzler and her team are continuing research in this area to better understand how emotions impact our engagement with news in everyday contexts.
Source: Complexity Science Hub