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journal article Nov 29, 2024

Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online

Killian L. McLoughlin William J. Brady ORCID Aden Goolsbee ORCID Ben Kaiser Kate Klonick ORCID M. J. Crockett ORCID
Science Vol. 386 No. 6725 pp. 991-996 · American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
View at Publisher Save 10.1126/science.adl2829
Abstract
We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is highly engaging and need not be accurate to achieve its communicative goals, making it an attractive signal to embed in misinformation. In eight studies that used US data from Facebook (1,063,298 links) and Twitter (44,529 tweets, 24,007 users) and two behavioral experiments (1475 participants), we show that (i) misinformation sources evoke more outrage than do trustworthy sources; (ii) outrage facilitates the sharing of misinformation at least as strongly as sharing of trustworthy news; and (iii) users are more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first. Consequently, outrage-evoking misinformation may be difficult to mitigate with interventions that assume users want to share accurate information.
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Cited By
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Metrics
42
Citations
77
References
Details
Published
Nov 29, 2024
Vol/Issue
386(6725)
Pages
991-996
Authors
K
Killian L. McLoughlin

Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.; School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.

W
William J. Brady

Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.

A
Aden Goolsbee

Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.

B
Ben Kaiser

Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.

K
Kate Klonick

School of Law, St. John’s University, Queens, NY, USA.; Information Society Project, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.; Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA.; Berkman Klein Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

M
M. J. Crockett

Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.; Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.; University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA.

Cite This Article
Killian L. McLoughlin, William J. Brady, Aden Goolsbee, et al. (2024). Misinformation exploits outrage to spread online. Science, 386(6725), 991-996. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adl2829
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