Highlights
- This paper examines how individuals make judgements and decisions when faced with fake news and how situational and social forces influence this.
- The paper uses an experimental setup to test the effect of anchoring when subjects have different levels of awareness and are confronted with sources marked by different levels of authenticity.
- Our results show that increasing subjects awareness as well as source credibility are crucial instruments for combating fake news.
Abstract
The present paper experimentally investigates the effect of anchoring on fake news. In particular, we test how different levels of authority and awareness influence this effect.
Subjects were presented with false information as an unreasonably high anchor and had to fulfil a related estimation task afterwards. Results show that all subjects, including those who were told that the information was false, were influenced by the anchor.
Furthermore, a higher level of awareness of fake news led subjects to adjust more strongly downwards from the anchor. The effect of anchoring was also reduced when subjects without prior awareness were presented with arguments that were inconsistent with the anchor information.
Labels:
fake_news, false_information, anchoring,
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