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Feeling is believing: The effects of mood on the semantic processing of fake news
Poster E13 in Poster Session E, Thursday, October 26, 10:15 am - 12:00 pm CEST, Espace Vieux-Port
Sabela Fondevila Estévez1,2, Emma Osorio-Iriarte1, Jose Sánchez-García1, Pilar Casado1,2, Laura Jiménez-Ortega1,2, Francisco Muñoz1,2, Miguel Rubianes1,2, Tatiana Almeida-Rivera1,2, Manuel Martín-Loeches1,2; 1Department of Psychobiology & Behavioral Sciences Methods, Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain, 2Cognitive Neuroscience Section, UCM-ISCIII Center for Human Evolution and Behavior, Madrid, Spain
In the political, social, and economic context of recent years, the phenomenon of fake news, particularly those that originated and shared on social networks, has acquired unprecedented features and expansion. Main international events such as presidential elections, migration movements, climate change, and the official advice linked to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have raised concerns about misinformation widespread by these means. Behavioral studies have demonstrated that emotionally evocative news is more credible. In this vein, people who experience more intense emotions are more likely to believe false news, and focusing attention on one's own emotions increases belief in this type of headline. In this experiment, we aim to extend previous evidence by investigating the effects of mood on the semantic processing of fake news, using Event Related Potentials (ERPs). We collected 160 fake and real news from specialized web platforms published from 2020 to 2023. These materials were classified by topic, and rated in their emotionality, degree of conspiracy, and psycholinguistic variables affecting semantic processing. Participants were instructed to read the set of fake/real news, presented using different media and social networks frames. Importantly, the mood was induced by a series of 1-min videos with a newscast format in a block-wise design every 5 news presentations. In one block, videos were highly arousing and negative (information about war, pandemic, natural disasters…) and, in the other block, videos were low arousing and contained neutral information (information about traffic sign changes, repair of the facilities of a public building, chess competition, …). We observed a main effect of the type of news in the P600/LPC, showing a larger amplitude for fake compared to real news in parietal regions. Further, this effect was driven by an interaction between the type of news and mood induction: the enhanced P600/LPP effect was only apparent during the neutral (low arousing) induction, but not for the negative (high arousing) mood induction. In sum, fake news, in comparison to real news, generally induce a repair and reanalysis process to achieve a meaningful understanding; but being in a negative mood blur such a difference, making fakes more real.
Topic Areas: Meaning: Discourse and Pragmatics,