The emotional content of information—how it is framed, the affective language it uses, and the emotional state of the reader—shapes belief formation, information sharing, and misinformation susceptibility. Emotional appeals are ubiquitous in misinformation campaigns, and understanding their psychological mechanisms is essential for designing effective interventions.
Key dimensions
Emotional language in misinformation:
- How emotionally-charged headlines affect belief in false claims
- The role of emotional language in driving social media engagement and viral spread
- Interaction between emotionality and fact-checking effectiveness
Emotional states and reasoning:
- How emotional arousal affects analytical thinking and susceptibility to misinformation
- The relationship between negative affect and belief in conspiracies
- Emotion regulation as a potential intervention target
Emotional content design:
- How propagandists strategically use emotional language to manipulate
- Role of emotions in coordinated disinformation campaigns
- Platform affordances that amplify emotional content
Key papers
- Martel, Pennycook & Rand (2020) — Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news — Two large experiments demonstrating that emotional engagement (across diverse emotions, not just anger) increases fake-news belief and decreases ability to discern real from false, while inducing analytical reasoning decreases false-news belief.
- Rosenzweig et al. (2021) — Happiness and surprise are associated with worse truth discernment of COVID-19 headlines among social media users in Nigeria — Survey of 1,341 Nigerian Facebook users finding happiness and surprise emotions specifically associated with worse truth discernment of COVID-19 misinformation; extends emotion-misinformation research to non-Western, pandemic context.
- Phillips et al. (2025) — Emotional language reduces belief in false claims — Three experiments show that high-emotionality versions of false claims are believed significantly less than low-emotionality versions; emotionally-worded fact-checks are also rated as less helpful, suggesting emotional language signals unreliability to readers.
See also
- misinformation — broader context on false belief formation
- fact-checking — emotional language's interaction with fact-check effectiveness
- belief-formation — psychological mechanisms of belief