ReviewHumanities & social sciences communications2023
Distractions, analytical thinking and falling for fake news: A survey of psychological factors.
Review in Humanities & social sciences communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- AI-supported real-time news evaluation reveals effects of time constraint on misinformation discernment.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Perceived Disinformation, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptoms in the Czech Population: Age-Specific Associations.Depression and anxiety · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Analytical thinking safeguards us against believing or spreading fake news. In various forms, this common assumption has been reported, investigated, or implemented in fake news education programs. Some have associated this assumption with the inverse claim, that distractions from analytical thinking may render us vulnerable to believing or spreading fake news. This paper surveys the research done between 2016 and 2022 on psychological factors influencing one's susceptibility to believing or spreading fake news, considers which of the psychological factors are plausible distractors to one's exercise of analytical thinking, and discusses some implications of considering them as distractors to analytical thinking. From these, the paper draws five conclusions: (1) It is not analytical thinking per se, but analytical thinking directed to evaluating the truth that safeguards us from believing or spreading fake news. (2) While psychological factors can distract us from exercising analytical thinking and they can also distract us in exercising analytical thinking. (3) Whether a psychological factor functions as a distractor from analytical thinking or in analytical thinking may depend on contextual factors. (4) Measurements of analytical thinking may not indicate vulnerability to believing or spreading fake news. (5) The relevance of motivated reasoning to our tendency to believe fake news should not yet be dismissed. These findings may be useful to guide future research in the intersection of analytical thinking and susceptibility to believing or spreading fake news.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.