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The Nuance
Letting Go of Anger Helps the Brain Combat Misinformation
There’s new evidence that strong emotion — and, in particular, anger — may allow falsehoods to flourish
On January 8, two days after former president Donald Trump incited a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, a 57-year-old Texas man tweeted a list of the penalties Trump would incur if he were impeached a second time. The listed penalties included the loss of Trump’s presidential pension, the loss of his Secret Service detail, and the loss of his ability to run again in 2024.
The tweet was reposted on a left-leaning Facebook page, at which point it went viral. The original tweet, which has since been deleted, accrued hundreds of thousands of “likes” and tens of thousands of retweets. While its assertions had the ring of truth, nearly all of its claims were either false or misleading.
“I think that part of the reason that tweet was shared by so many people is that it was consistent with something a lot of people wanted to believe, and they didn’t think about whether the information was actually true,” says Laura Scherer, PhD, a social psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Colorado.
Some of Scherer’s recent work has examined the spread of health misinformation online and particularly on social media. She says that there are a number of factors that cause people to believe in, and share, lies. While some of these factors involve a person’s preexisting knowledge or health literacy, other influences can lead even astute and knowledgeable people to buy into blatant falsehoods.
At a time when “alternative facts,” deepfakes, and other forms of misinformation are increasingly commonplace, it’s more important than ever for people to recognize the circumstances that make them vulnerable to false information. There’s new evidence that strong emotion — and, in particular, anger — may allow falsehoods to flourish.
Anger seems to reduce people’s skepticism, increase their confidence, and “streamline” their thinking.
