Ep 286: What to do About Fake News? Apply a Little Psychology

We’re all aware of the problem of fake news, but why do we fall for it? When we read a post on Facebook that sounds a little questionable, why don’t we check into it further? You better believe there’s some psychology going on here. In this episode I interview Dr. Gleb Tsipursky of Ohio State university. He’s been studying this in great depth. We’ll apply theories from Daniel Kahnemann (Thinking Fast and Slow) as well as examine the “backfire effect”, emotional reasoning and emotional contagion to better understand what’s going on. In the upcoming second part of this interview we’ll look at what Gleb is up to with his Pro Truth Pledge where more psychology is being applied to help us all stop spreading fake news.

Resources for this Episode

• • Gleb Tsipursky’s bio page

• • Intentional Insights home page

• • Gleb Tsipursky’s homepage at Ohio State university

• • The Fact Check website

• • How to Argue With a Snopes Denier

• • Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahnemann

• • Backfire Effect

• • As scientists, we must fight fake news with truth (link to an annotated Diigo page).

• • Self-serving bias

• • Pro truth pledge website