Data and Codebook for Ludwig & Sommer "Mindsets and Politically Motivated Reasoning about Fake News"

False information published intentionally to mislead the public is common in today’s political communication. Given their professional appearance, many people struggle to detect fake news, especially online. Moreover, if the news is ideologically loaded, self-serving judgmental biases like the tendency to preferentially accept information that confirm one’s political standpoint aggravate the challenge of identifying false information. As a result of this ideological belief bias, people are less likely to detect fake news when it conforms with their political views. A current discussion in political reasoning research concerns the role of deliberation. Proponents of motivated reasoning accounts posit that deliberation may reinforce the ideological belief bias, because reasoning about politics primarily serves to defend and rationalize one’s position. An opposing view based on dual-process theory assumes that deliberation should reduce the ideological belief bias because deliberation facilitates an unbiased assessment. Building on mindset theory of action phases (MAP), this proposal investigates the role of motivational states in moderating the ideological belief bias. The MAP emphasizes the distinction between goal-setting and goal-striving to understand how cognitive processes are attuned to the different stages of goal pursuit. Accordingly, distinct cognitive procedures (mindsets) are activated during goal-setting and goal-striving to facilitate performance of these fundamentally different tasks. A deliberative mindset supports goal-setting by activating procedures that allow a balanced consideration of multiple goals’ pros/cons. The implemental mindset activates a distinct set of cognitive procedures that strengthen persistence in goal-striving and shield the goal from competing temptations. Given their unique characteristics, these mindsets may distinctly affect the detection of politically motivated fake news. The deliberative mindset stimulates more thorough information search and reasoning. If reasoning is primarily used to rationalize one’s political viewpoints, this mindset should amplify the ideological belief bias, and in effect, reduce fake news detectability. If intensified deliberation rather facilitates unbiased information processing, the opposite may be expected. The implemental mindset relies on self-serving biases to facilitate goal-striving and should thus accentuate the ideological belief bias. To test these hypotheses, an online-experiment is proposed in which some participants are induced with deliberative/implemental mindsets prior to rating the veracity of (true/fake) news headlines. Importantly, some headlines favor a politically conservative view; others lean toward a liberal perspective. This research contributes to the debate about deliberation in political reasoning, it sheds light on the motivational processes involved in identifying false information, and it informs the development of interventions to promote fake news detection.

False information is sometimes published intentionally to mislead the public opinion, and it is often difficult to detect. A particular challenge is ideologically loaded fake news. As the result of an ideological belief bias, where people are more inclined to accept information that agrees with their prior beliefs, many people fail to detect fake news when it conforms with their political views. Building on the mindset theory of action phases, this research investigates the role of motivational states in moderating the ideological belief bias. We tested two competing predictions to study the motivational processes implicated in fake news detection. Motivated reasoning accounts posit that deliberation should reinforce the ideological belief bias, because reasoning about politics primarily serves to defend and rationalize one’s position. An opposing view, based on dual-process theory, assumes that deliberation attenuates the ideological belief bias because deliberation facilitates an unbiased assessment of new information. An online-experiment (N = 497) tested these competing accounts. Participants were induced with deliberative/implemental mindsets prior to rating the veracity of (true/fake) news headlines. Importantly, some headlines favored a politically conservative view; others leant toward a liberal perspective. Based on self-reported political preference (Democrat vs. Republican), headlines were categorized as congruent or incongruent with participants’ political views. We replicated a pattern of correct identification of true/fake news that was consistent with an ideological belief bias. Participants were more accepting of news that conformed with their political views. Specifically, compared to incongruent news, participants rated congruent true news more frequently as true, and they were more likely to fail to detect favorable fake news. In the main analysis, mindsets did not moderate the ideological belief bias, but showed interesting relationships with cognitive reflection and dishonest behavior. Further exploration based on a signal-detection perspective suggested that a deliberative mindset could promote fake news detectability.