Gen Z and Conservatives: More Vulnerable to Misinformation Than Others

Gen Z and Conservatives: More Vulnerable to Misinformation Than Others

Author: Hadi Samadi

Who is most easily fooled by misinformation? In response to this important question, a very large-scale study has been conducted; over 66,000 people in 24 countries around the world participated in this research through a public website.

The Role of Age: The results are largely disappointing because they show that, contrary to the common belief that Gen Z youth (born 1997-2012) have greater media awareness due to growing up with the internet, this generation scored the lowest in detecting fake news and were more vulnerable than other age groups. An interesting and hopeful point is that despite Gen Z's scores being lower than the rest, this group's self-assessment was more realistic than previous generations. In other words, they themselves knew that they did not perform well in detecting misinformation.

The Role of Political Orientation: As previous evidence has also shown, individuals who identified themselves as politically conservative or very conservative scored lower on average in detecting misinformation. The great danger of this failure to detect becomes clear when this group becomes active in political and security institutions, because a low ability to detect misinformation can have dire consequences for everyone. Among very conservative individuals, the link between high confidence and actual ability was weaker; meaning this group's confidence was less indicative of their real skill, which further increases the risks of their decision-making.

The Role of Gender: When it came to gender, it became clear that men performed better in detecting misinformation. However, women had a better self-assessment than men. In other words, men were better at detecting misinformation but had false confidence in their performance and evaluated it higher than reality.

The Role of Education: Individuals with higher levels of formal education performed better in detecting misinformation. But a danger also lurks for the university-educated: individuals with higher education (bachelor's degree and above) were slightly less accurate than those with lower education in estimating their own ability. That is, people who have attended university should be more careful about their self-assessments.

But overall, across the entire population, people who thought they had a good ability to detect fake news really did perform better.

The Role of Geography: The performance of participants in different countries varied slightly, although some European countries and Canada performed similarly to the United States. The researchers say this study was conducted in English, so the findings may not be fully generalizable to non-English-speaking populations, although there is no compelling reason to think the situation in other countries is different.

Why is this research so important? Vulnerability to misinformation is influenced by various social, psychological, and demographic factors, and no one is immune: all individuals, regardless of their demographic group or beliefs, are at risk of believing misinformation. Strengthening critical thinking skills and digital literacy is essential for everyone. Even small differences in vulnerability can, given the massive volume of online information, have significant real-world consequences, such as for public health and political decisions. A very important point is that identifying more vulnerable groups does not mean blaming them, but rather indicates the need for more targeted efforts to increase media literacy and critical thinking across all segments of society.

What should we do? Among other things, read philosophy. Studying philosophy, especially naturalistic philosophy intertwined with science, enhances the ability to discern misinformation. Philosophy inherently involves questioning, logical analysis of arguments, identifying fallacies, and evaluating presuppositions. These skills directly aid in recognizing the weaknesses, contradictions, and common tricks found in misinformation. By posing questions such as "How do we know?" and "What is the criterion of truth?", philosophy makes a person more sensitive and precise regarding information sources, methods of acquiring knowledge, and the degree of certainty of claims. Naturalistic philosophies emphasize the importance of objective evidence, the scientific method, and consistency with scientific findings. This approach accustoms the individual to seek reliable and testable evidence for any factual claim (especially claims about the physical and social world) and to challenge baseless, pseudoscientific, or purely intuition- and tradition-based claims.

Understanding philosophical complexities and the limits of human knowledge leads to intellectual humility. This makes a person less prone to false confidence and hasty acceptance of information.