February 3, 2017

Why Fake News Targeted Trump Supporters

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/02/why-fake-news-targeted-trump-supporters/515433/

[snip]
One of the few comforts liberals had in the aftermath of the election was the anecdotal reporting that fake-news purveyors found it easier to get conservatives to believe their baloney.

As one such fake-news entrepreneur, responsible for articles with headlines like, “FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide,” told NPR: "We’ve tried to do [fake news with] liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out."

No doubt this served as a signal, to some, that if fake news works better on Trump supporters, it must be because liberals are smarter than conservatives. “I can safely binge-drink the next four years away,” some liberals might have thought, “since I have all these extra brain cells to burn.”

Well, not quite. According to a study slated to be published in the journal Psychological Science, it might be true that conservatives are more likely to fall for false, threatening-seeming information, but it’s not because they’re dumb. It’s because they’re hyper-attuned to hazards in their world. If they spot a sign of danger, they figure trusting it is better than ignoring it.
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Interesting article... Republicons and their Russian brothers were very successful in cranking up the fear factor...