Millares, Albert Kyle A.

11 - Celerio

Why We Fall for Misinformation

Misinformation and lying has been a part of any living creature since the beginning of
time. From animals who play dead to catch their prey, to humans lying about traffic because
they’re late, misinformation has expanded to social media due to its rapid growth. It is important
to have the ability to tell apart fake news from real news. However, even if we have acquired
these abilities, there are still numerous reasons why we fall for misinformation.

Misinformation or fake news is harmful because of how many people are susceptible to
it. Most fake news media is often very believable and realistic if done well. A study from
Stanford University shows that plenty of American students have a “stunning and dismaying”
consistency in determining what’s real or what’s fake. “Overall, young people’s ability to reason
about the information on the internet can be summed up in one word: bleak.” (Stanford History
Education Group). The main reason why we fall for fake news is due to a psychological feature
called cognitive bias. Cognitive referring to mental action, and bias referring to prejudice of
being against or in support of one thing. There are multiple types of cognitive biases that explain
why we fall for fake news. For example, confirmation bias influences a person where they tend
to search for something they want to see, resulting in them clicking on fake news and perceiving
it to be true. Class suspensions are an example of confirmation bias for most people. Another
type of cognitive bias is the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect causes people to believe
that something is true due to multiple people sharing and believing it. The example of class
suspensions also apply to this.

After all, a psychological feature is not something we can remove, but fact checking, and
double checking is something that we should practice in order to be less vulnerable when it
comes to misinformation. Misinformation has affected so many people with their daily lives, but
it only takes one minute to avoid these inconveniences. If possible, try to make it easier to avoid
these problems and spread the right information to others.