Loughborough University study finds conservative supporters and social media users with right-wing ideological beliefs are more likely to spread fake news, while left-wingers were more likely to try to correct it (
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/...survey-a8908361.html).
Study at Ohio State University shows more shocking but false stories tended to support beliefs held by conservatives. "Conservatives are uniquely likely to hold misperceptions and cling to fake news", says the Journal of Science Advances.
2018 study by the Cambridge Institute of Religion and International Studies (
ciris.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/...on-and-Fake-News.pdf) finds that the intersection of fake news and religion is marked by asymmetries; fake news circulates more highly among conservatives, and often features religious and apocalyptic themes. "The origin of the fake news information entertainment ecosystem lies largely in Christian fundamentalism’s cultivation of counter expertise, and is being exploited by Russia to subvert Western democracies and deepen social divisions," the study finds.
Oxford study shows fake news primarily a right wing thing (
www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/...university-of-oxford), with conservatives more likely to consume junk news.
2021 study finds that conservatives’ are more likely to be susceptible to political misperceptions, conspiracy theories and fake news (ht tps://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/23/eabf1234).
2021 study finds that conservatives are more likely to believe in fake news, believe unsourced claims and believe falsehoods. Conservatives are less able to distinguish political truths from falsehoods, mainly because of a glut of right-leaning misinformation, the national study shows.The results were published (June 2, 2021) in the Journal of Science Advances (ht tps://news.osu.edu/conservatives-more-susceptible-to-believing-falsehoods/).
Countless studies show link between conservatism and cognitive inflexibility, low IQ, low education, prejudice, racism, and the inability to handle nuance, complexity and abstract thinking. Countless studies show links between conservatism and a preference for absolutes, simple answers, and a disposition toward conspiratorial and magical thinking (ht tps://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55893129.pdf,
www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/...ess-educated-adults/ )
Countless studies show link between conservatism and cognitive impairment (one becomes more right wing when drunk or forced to make snap decisions, for example), and that conservatives experience a higher need for cognitive closure, where cognitive closure is defined as the motivation to quickly formulate and maintain a clear opinion on an issue, rather than accepting confusion, chaos, anxiety or complexity (
www.jstor.org/stable/20779582).
Countless studies show conservatives less likely to change beliefs when faced when evidence (h ttp://journal.sjdm.org/20/200414/jdm200414.html). The belief that beliefs should change according to evidence was robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims. The opposite was true for conservatives.
Countless studies show links between wealth and conservatism; for example, studies find that recent lottery winners tend to switch towards support for a right-wing political party and to become less egalitarian. The larger the win, the more people tilt to the right (
www.psypost.org/2020/06/people-who-feel-...ue-study-finds-57087).
Studies show link between conservative dark money, billionaire think tanks, right-wing networks and Big Oil, with fake news websites (
www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Money_(book), and social media algorithms designed to tailor outrage news to specifically targeted users. In this way, wealth and power consolidates its power, and creates a fake news ecosystem to prey on the cognitively vulnerable, and so protect this wealth.
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"Conspiracy theorists largely believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. But the truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The world is rudderless.” ― Alan Moore
“The world of conspiracy theories is one where stupid people dismiss the expertise of highly qualified people, and attribute to these experts a wicked desire to lie to and gull the masses. In other words, they portray experts as sinister enemies of the people. Conspiracy theories reflect the increasingly prevalent notion that the average, uneducated person is always right – can always see the real truth of a situation – while the educated experts are always wrong because they are deliberately lying to the people to further a conspiracy by the elite against the people. It is increasingly being perceived as a “sin”, a crime, to be smart, to be an expert. Average people do not like smart people, do not trust them, and are happy to regard them as nefarious conspirators. They are constructing a fantasy world where the idiot is always right and honest, and anyone who opposes the idiot always wrong and dishonest. A global Confederacy of Dunces is being established, whose cretinous values are transmitted by bizarre memes that crisscross the internet at a dizzying speed, and which are always accepted uncritically as the finest nuggets of truth. Woe betide anyone who challenges the Confederacy. They will be immediately trolled.” ― Joe Dixon (Dumbocalypse Now)
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