Moral deliberation reduces people’s intentions to share headlines they recognize as “fake news”.
Abstract
= 2,509 U.S. and U.K. social media users, including a demographically representative U.S. sample) tested a moral-deliberation procedure in which participants list reasons why it would be ethical or unethical to share different news headlines on social media. This procedure-relative to control conditions that prompted nonmoral deliberation, prompted nondeliberative thinking about morality, or included no prompt-reduced intentions to share fake news about business, health, and politics, even when the news was flagged as false. These effects were (a) larger when the fake news aligned with participants' politics, (b) reversed for real news, (c) still observed after a delay, and (d) mediated by moral judgments. Our results offer a theoretical foundation for new tools to fight society's "infodemic" of misinformation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Fields of Study & Subjects
Misinformation and Its Impacts
Social Media and Politics
Public Relations and Crisis Communication
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Journal of Experimental Psychology General
- Publisher
- American Psychological Association (APA)
- Volume
- 155
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 603–628
- Publication date
- 5 January 2026
- Language
- EN