New Study Finds Those With Darker Personalities Will Embrace Misinformation More Readily

A new study is going on to make some bizarre but interesting claims about people with darker personalities.

Those individuals who display such dark characteristics or like to bend the reality of the matter to their own preferences are going to be more accepting of fake news, says a new study.

The report comes to us thanks to researchers at the Human-Computer Media Institute that discussed more details about those with darker traits. Seeing them reject all types of concrete facts is just a part of their nature and it’s hard for them to change.

They would much rather pick out a narrative that suits their needs and wants than go about accepting the truth. Moreover, it’s characteristics like narcissism and psychopathy that make them assume that themes like media and politics are full of nothing but lies. They believe such endeavors are out to benefit things of their own interest.

As a whole, the fewer people who went on to believe in facts, the lower the probability of them distinguishing one true statement from the other. And it’s interesting to see how the darker personality statement was getting stronger.

This particular group of individuals who are more self-interested or self-invested at the expense of others, tend to feel that there’s a lot of doubt between scientific findings and personal thoughts.

Some of the beliefs they have are post-factual as they like to believe things that only feel true to them as confirmed by one psychologist at the university. Moreover, these are the same people who can’t delineate between things like fact and fiction. They struggle with it and believe a lot of the fake news is out there.

The best example is them not wearing a face mask because they feel the virus does not exist and it was just falsely created or hyped up by the media. At times, it’s awfully selfish behavior coming from their way as it’s at the cost of others’ sanity, health, and peace of mind.

For the study, they gave nearly 600 different people short media headlines before they really tested them for accuracy. In addition to that, each study participant was even given some detailed survey forms to fill out that had queries linked to their gut feelings and how frequently they end up assuming people are making up things.

And last but not least, the study went on to decipher how frequently the participant was willing to add their own twist of words or beliefs into it.

This is when the authors came to the final judgment that people aren’t going to believe in things like power linked to sound evidence. Moreover, even fact-checkers are going to make them sway their final decision and that’s just how adamant they are in this regard.

This gives rise to the term epistemic beliefs. And it’s related to the set of individual beliefs regarding a person’s nature linked to human knowledge. To put it simply, it’s like how a certain individual believes any other can know something and what exactly the criteria for judgment can be as far as knowledge is concerned.

There comes a point in time when you have to accept the truth of the matter. People are bound to have the most different opinions out there today. And some are going to be getting more support than all others. But if only people understood that better, then life would be simpler.

Remember, people aren’t willing to take steps like these, and in matters linked to climate change or even the pandemic, it’s tough. Arguments can have serious consequences in this manner.

Illustration: Freepik/Pikisuperstar

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