Belief in Fake News is Associated with Delusionality, Dogmatism, Religious Fundamentalism, and Reduced Analytic Thinking

Contributions

• Identifies specific psychological traits—delusionality, dogmatism, and religious fundamentalism—associated with increased susceptibility to fake news belief
• Demonstrates that reduced analytic thinking and reduced actively open-minded thinking mediate the relationship between these traits and fake news belief
• Shows that delusionality has a significant direct effect on fake news belief independent of cognitive style mediators
• Provides evidence that belief in implausible false news is not randomly distributed across the population but concentrated among individuals with specific psychological profiles
• Suggests that cognitive-style interventions targeting analytic thinking might be leveraged to reduce fake news belief across multiple individual-difference groups

Method

Two preregistered studies examined the association between individual psychological differences and susceptibility to fake news belief.

Study 1: 502 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk rated the accuracy of 12 fake and 12 real news headlines (pro-Democrat and pro-Republican) on a 1–4 scale. Participants completed measures of: delusionality (Peters et al. Delusion Inventory), dogmatism (Altemeyer's dogmatism scale), religious fundamentalism (Altemeyer & Hunsberger religious fundamentalism scale), actively open-minded thinking (AOT; shortened 8-item scale), and analytic thinking (Cognitive Reflection Test, 7 items). Data quality screening (>95% completion rate) resulted in final n=502.

Study 2: 446 participants followed the same procedure with additional measures of illusion of truth and postdiction effects. Participants also completed the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) alongside the other measures. Similar data quality criteria were applied.

Both studies examined zero-order correlations, then conducted mediation analyses testing whether analytic and actively open-minded thinking mediate the relationship between trait measures (delusionality, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism) and fake news belief.

Results

Correlations: Delusional ideation, dogmatism, and religious fundamentalism were all positively correlated with belief in fake news (Study 1: r = .72, .81, .61 respectively, all p < .001). These traits were negatively correlated with both analytic thinking and actively open-minded thinking.

Mediation analysis: When analytic thinking and actively open-minded thinking were entered simultaneously as mediators:

• The direct effect of delusional ideation on fake news belief remained significant (β = .15, p < .001, 95% CI [.09–.21])
• Dogmatism's effect on fake news belief was partially mediated by reduced analytic thinking (indirect effect: β = .18, p < .001) and reduced actively open-minded thinking (indirect effect: β = .12, p < .001)
• Religious fundamentalism similarly showed significant indirect effects through both cognitive-style mediators (analytic thinking: β = .29, p < .001; AOT: β = .17, p < .001)

The analyses demonstrated that approximately 37% of the indirect effect of delusional ideation on fake news belief was explained by the combined effect of analytic and actively open-minded thinking.

Notes

This is a foundational study establishing that fake news susceptibility clusters around specific psychological traits, with cognitive style as a partial mediator. The boundary between direct and mediated effects is important: delusionality affects fake news belief both through reduced analytic thinking and through a direct pathway, suggesting the trait influences belief through multiple mechanisms. The study strengthens claims that cognitive-style interventions (which target analytic thinking and open-mindedness) might be effective broadly, not just for specific populations. One limitation is that the study measures belief in political headlines; future work should test generalization to other domains (health, conspiracy). The finding that religious fundamentalism predicts fake news belief warrants careful interpretation: the effect appears to work through cognitive style rather than content (political vs. religious), suggesting the mechanism is general rather than specific to ideology.