Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Even with accurate info, humans ‘self-generate their own misinformation’: study


An illustration of dialogue and thoughts taking place among silhouettes of people in various positions.
NY Post  December 10, 2019
Although social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter have taken heat for spreading misinformation, it turns out that we — all of us — may be our own worst enemies in the battle against the scourge of fake news.

A new study found that people given accurate statistics on controversial topics tend to misremember those numbers in order to fit their own commonly held beliefs.

In the study, when people were shown that the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States declined recently — which is true but has gone against most people’s beliefs — they tended to recall the opposite. 

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