Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: We explored whether moralization and attitude extremity may amplify a preference to share politically congruent (“myside”) partisan news and what types of targeted interventions may reduce this tendency. Across 12 online experiments (N = 6,989), we examined decisions to share news touching on the divisive issues of gun control, abortion, gender and racial equality, and immigration. Myside sharing was systematically observed and was consistently amplified when participants (i) moralized and (ii) were attitudinally extreme on the issue. The amplification of myside sharing by moralization also frequently occurred above and beyond that of attitude extremity. These effects generalized to both true and fake partisan news. We then examined a number of interventions meant to curb myside sharing by manipulating (i) the audience to which people imagined sharing partisan news (political friends vs. foes), (ii) the anonymity of the account used (anonymous vs. personal), (iii) a message warning against the myside bias, and (iv) a message warning against the reputational costs of sharing “mysided” fake news coupled with an interactive rating task. While some of those manipulations slightly decreased sharing in general and/or the size of myside sharing, the amplification of myside sharing by moral attitudes was consistently robust to these interventions. Our findings regarding the robust exaggeration of selective communication by morality and extremism offer important insights into belief polarization and the spread of partisan and false information online.
Source: PNAS Nexus
Authors: Antoine Marie, Sacha Altay, Brent Strickland
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $4,000
Awards: G103286785, G1341119228, G2149073374, G2404679718, Paris Sciences et Lettres, G2659019386, G3207356259, G3953683450, G4190806336, Frontières en cognition, G4411689835, Psycho-semantics: new data for formal semantics models, stronger frameworks for experimental studies, G471331628, G4937468798, Institute of Cognitive Studies of Ecole normale superieure, G5537318980, G6759105742, G6803667113, G7240651115, G7376787254, G7546946110, G782245399, G896728979
OpenAlex ID: W4363678960