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DISCUSSION PAPER SERIES IN ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT

Fake News – Does Perception Matter More Than the Truth?

Peter-J. Jost, Johanna Pünder,

Isabell Schulze-Lohoff

Discussion Paper No. 17-30

GERMAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION – GEABA

Fake News - Does Perception Matter More Than

the Truth?

Peter-J. Jost, Johanna Pünder & Isabell Schulze-Lohoff

Abstract

The present paper experimentally investigates the effect of anchoring

on fake news. In particular, we test how different levels of authority and

awareness influence this effect. Subjects were presented with false informa-

tion as an unreasonably high anchor and had to fullfil a related estimation

task afterwards. Results show that all subjects, including those who were

told that the information was false, were influenced by the anchor. Fur-

thermore, a higher level of awareness of fake news led subjects to adjust

downwards from the anchor. The effect of anchoring was also reduced

when subjects without prior awareness were presented with arguments

that were inconsistent with the anchor information.

1

1 Introduction

Although the use of fake news is an old phenomenon, it has reached its greatest

popularity in 2016 with its influence on the U.S. presidential election, the Brexit,

and the European refugee crisis.1 The main reason for this latest success of fake

news comes from the increasing popularity of the Internet since the beginning of

the century It offers an uncharted medium that is uncontrollable, wide-reaching,

and anonymous, thus making it perfect for the spreading of fake news, see Baym

(2005).

If we consider fake news as a good in a market with supply and demand

side, we can identify three drivers which form the basis for this development.

The first driver is the production of fake news which became more efficient over

the last years due to the technological progress in digitalization. Programs like

Adobe Photoshop allow for the creation of a strikingly real-looking yet fake

reality; social bots automatically generate messages in social media networks

and can, for example, perfectly imitate Facebook profiles; and new algorithms

and big data analyses now create detailed user profiles such that a user can be

targeted directly with news in line with her general opinion of a topic. This all

enables the widespread use of fake news. A second important driver comes from

changes at the supply side of the market for fake news: the commercial use of the

Internet allows fake news authors to gain unprecedented advertisement revenues

giving them more incentives than ever, see Metzger et al. (2003). The concept

is simple: An article that proposes sensational yet completely fictional news will

get clicked on and shared, thus generating thousands of dollars in advertisement

revenues per day, see Pickard (2017). It is therefore not surprising that over the

past two years, the industry of passing off fake news stories as actual ones

has exploded with professionally designed websites employing numerous people,

see Sydell (2016) And third, the demand side of the market shifted in the

last years. Different to the older generation, the so-called “Generation Y,” the

digital natives, now uses online subscriptions as well as social media as their

main information sources, see Ahlers (2006).

As fake news has become a widely discussed topic in recent years, barely any

economic research has been done so far. The aim of this paper to fill this gap by

studying the determinants of the current success story of fake news. By doing

so, we deviate from the standard normative approach to a study of fake news.

If we would follow this approach, we would focus on what people "should" do

when faced with fake news and how they "should" act as morally responsible

citizens. The underlying assumption of this normative approach is that indi-

viduals are seen as rational, purposive actors who do correctly interpret fake

news in a conscious manner and understand the implications of their actions.

1For early instances of fake news, see, for example, Dittmar (2011) or Eisenstein (1980)

who argue that the Catholic Church before the invention of the printing press in the 15th

century bent the truth as they needed for it to fit their agenda. The selling of letters of

indulgence claiming that people would go to heaven after they die, or that natural disasters

occurred as a direct punishment from God, are only two of such examples. Also the rumors

about the Jews that they slaughtered Christian children and used their blood during Passover

celebrations persisted, is an early example of such fake news, see Gottheil et. al (2011).

2

However, this rational approach is not able to account for the emergence of fake

news and their success in the last year. It is for this reason that the present

paper advocates a behavioral approach to the study of fake news. Using an

experimental approach we want to examine how individuals make actual judg-

ments and decisions when they are faced with fake news, and how situational

and social forces influence this.

By using such a descriptive approach we focus on the process of judgment

formation in the context of fake news. The underlying assumption is that the

circumstances under which persons receive and process fake news are crucial

for their assessments of whether it is true or not as well as for their subsequent

decision making. Building on previous literature in social science and behavioral

economics we consider the following three-stage process of judgment formation

in the context of fake news:

FakeNews

Individual Processing

Phase

Stage 1

Search Phase

Stage 2

Group Phase

Stage 3

Judg-ment

Figure 1: The process of judgment formation in the context of fake news

The process of judgment formation starts after a reader received some fake

news.2 In the first stage, the individual processing phase, the reader then either

makes a judgment concerning an issue that is related to the news she received

before, or she makes a first credibility assessment concerning the trustworthi-

ness of the received news. She does so according to all directly visible factors.

Such factors are, for example, the content of the news itself or the design of the

website. Since these assessments are in general judgments under uncertainty,

one of the most important heuristics when it comes to information processing

in this stage is the anchoring and adjustment heuristic formulated by Tversky

and Kahneman (1974). Two influencing factors on anchoring are important in

this first stage, namely awareness and authority: The first factor is the level of

awareness of the fake news and how it influences the receiver’s anchoring mecha-

nism. This aspect relates to the uncertainty with respect to the trustworthiness

of fake news and is particularly interesting with regard to the future of fake

news as people are slowly becoming more aware of the issue. Consequently, our

research could provide an idea of how people will process fake news in the future.

The second factor is the level of authority connected to the received informa-

tion. This aspect relates to the authenticity with respect to the trustworthiness

of the author of the information and follows the observation by Lowry et al.

(2014) who argue that the more authentic the context appears to the receiver,

the more convinced she is that she is reading trustworthy news. This aspect

also relates to the observation by Lin et al. (2016) that fake news are often

2 In the following, reader and receiver will be used as synonyms.

3

believed by so many that even mainstream media picks up on it, giving it a

seriously higher reach and credibility. Here, we analyze whether (deceitfully)

quoting an authority figure or illustrating the author himself to be an authority

figure could lead the reader to believe the news more readily.

As fake news are normally spread via social media networks or online plat-

forms, receivers of fake news can usually gather additional information to con-

firm their initial evaluation from the processing phase. Here, we first examine

how the levels of awareness and authority from the individual processing stage

influences her decision whether or not to gather new information. Given the

reader decides for additional information, there are two ways to do so: searching

for additional information and/or relying on the opinion of others. We incor-

porate these aspects in the second and third stage of the judgment formation

model. In the second stage, the search phase, the receiver has the possibility

to seek further to confirm her evaluation from the first stage. This information

search in general includes keyword search for further articles and information

about the author but not communication with other people. This can be done

in the third stage, the group phase. This phase introduces group dynamics

and mimics the observation “that most users rely on others to make credibil-

ity assessments, often through the use of group-based tools“, see Metzger et

al. (2010, p.413). Likes and shares show her how many other people favor the

news and comments allow for reading different opinions on the information. At

this stage, the reader gains an overview of how the public, consisting of both

friends and strangers, has reacted to the news. This third phase is, just like

the second one, optional as not all receivers choose to engage in conversation

about every article they read. There is also the option for the receiver to go

back to the second phase after having completed the third phase, should she

feel the need to conduct further research after having received new information

through communication. With respect to both stages we here examine how the

reader’s initial assessment from the first phase will be strengthened, neutralized

or weakened depending on whether she finds further confirming or contradicting

information.

The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we briefly review the experi-

mental literature on anchoring and adjustment and its relationship to fake news.

Section 3 introduces our model of judgment formation and Section 4 describes

the experimental setup along this model. Hypotheses and results in the next

two sections with a concluding discussion thereof finalize this paper.

2 Related Literature

In the following, previous research done on the main topics of this paper will

be outlined. Specifically, anchoring will be discussed in detail with regard to

the two influencing factors of authority and awareness. As there is barely any

literature concerning fake news directly, research from relating fields will be

discussed and applied to fake news.

The classical study of externally provided anchors was conducted by Tversky

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and Kahneman (1974) using a wheel of fortune. In their experiment, partici-

pants first observed the wheel that was predetermined to stop on either 10 or 65

and then asked to estimate the percentage of African countries that are mem-

bers of the United Nations. Their finding was that subjects’ judgments were

influenced by the initial anchor: Those whose wheel stopped on 10 guessed lower

values than those whose wheel stopped at 65. This anchoring effect due to an

insufficient adjustment of the anchor confirms that people rely too heavily on

the first anchor that is set and adjust insufficiently from it. In a fake news

context, this means that whatever the content and credibility of the news, it

serves as an anchor. Accordingly, even if the reader reaches the conclusion that

the news is not true, given that she did not have prior knowledge of the topic

discussed, she might still be influenced by the news in her judgment of the topic.

While the previous studies were focusing on a completely irrelevant anchor,

others investigate the anchoring effect in a scenario of a plausible anchor, see

Strack and Mussweiler (1997) or Wegener et al. (2010). These studies yielded

no significant experimental evidence that the plausibility of an anchor influ-

ences the anchoring effect. Furnham and Boo (2011) thus characterized the

informational relevance of an anchor to be irrelevant for anchoring in judgment

formation. Glöckner and Englich (2015) criticized the previous work for insuf-

ficient manipulation and participants’ subjective judgments of the relevance of

an anchor. Using a direct empirical test of anchor relevance on judgments, they

showed that relevant anchors yielded a stronger anchoring effect. This aspect

is critical for our experiment as both the different awareness and the different

authority conditions aim at manipulating the relevance of the given anchor.

The anchoring effect has proven to be strikingly robust in countless experi-

ments, and there is little evidence of successful prevention or countermeasures,

see Englich and Mussweiler (2016). However, Mussweiler et al. (2000) found

in the first of their studies that by listing counter-arguments, the anchoring

effect could be mitigated in part. A so-called consider-the-opposite approach

was used to bring subjects to think about arguments contradicting the anchor

value consciously. While the anchoring effect still occurred in all treatments,

when participants were in the consider-the-opposite treatment, it was only mar-

ginally significant. When participants were not instructed to think of counter-

arguments, it was highly significant. This research is especially important for

this paper because the second stage of the experiment provides subjects with

anchor-inconsistent arguments aimed at testing whether the same limitations

apply in a fake news context.

In a natural experiment following a release of false news, Carvalho et al.

(2011) investigated the persisting effect thereof. When the 2002 news about

United Airlines’ parent company’s bankruptcy resurfaced, leading people to be-

lieve the company was again bankrupt, stock prices fell dramatically. Even three

trading sessions after the clarification, they had not returned to their old level.

Carvalho et al. (2011) conclude from further testing on the incident that a false

news shock can have a lasting effect on readers even after the news has been

corrected. Even an explicit warning about this continuous effect of misinfor-

mation, an increased awareness thereof, did not lead to an elimination of the

5

effect. It did, however, reduce the extent to which the information was believed

more than a mere awareness that “facts are not always properly checked before

[the] information is disseminated”, see Ecker et al. (2010 p.1087). The present

experiment investigates this effect in the context of fake news where participants

were previously anchored. Still, the experiment’s awareness treatments aim at

confirming the effect of information known to be false.

Another topic of importance with regard to fake news is source credibility.

Source credibility has an enormous impact on the assessment of whether news

is true or false, see Castillo et al. (2011). Moreover, people are more likely

to believe information to come from a credible source when the information is

in line with their beliefs, see Fragale and Heath (2004) and Li and Sakamoto

(2014). This underlines that the receiver’s opinion plays an important role for

the imagined credibility of a source. The effect can be explained by people’s

tendency to believe that their view is correct and thus, a source confirming this

view has to be credible, see Fragale and Heath (2004) or Sternthal et al. (1978).

Further empirical evidence of the persuasive effect of seemingly reliable sources

has been provided by many other studies, see Chaiken and Maheswaran (1994),

Robins and Holmes (2008) and Tormala et al. (2006). In addition to being a key

success determinant of fake news in general, a connection can be drawn between

source credibility and the degree of authority investigated in our experiment.

In this case, the authority that biases the reader is not a specific person but

a website that is perceived as a credible newspaper, thus giving it authority.

Therefore, the higher people evaluate the authority or credibility of the source,

the higher is the effect of the respective anchoring function of the news.

All in all, anchoring as well as source credibility effects have been analyzed

separately in detail over the last decades. These studies provide evidence of

the robustness of anchors and the positive correlation of persuasion and source

credibility. Nevertheless, the combination of an anchor with different credibility

treatments has not been analyzed in the context of fake news before. Moreover,

several awareness levels concerning the existence of untrustworthy sources have

been added in our experiments.

3 The Model

In this section, we describe the different stages of the judgment formation in

the context of fake news as outlined in the introductory section in more detail.

In each of the three different stages the receiver evaluates the truthfulness of

the information on a certainty scale. Our model of judgment formation has two

dimensions, the uncertainty the receiver has with respect to the truthfulness of

the information she receives, and the different stages of the judgment formation

process as discussed in the Introduction:

6

Figure 2: The model of judgment formation

The -axis reflects the different stages of judgment formation; Stage 1, the

individual processing phase; Stage 2, the searching phase; and Stage 3, the

group phase. We assume that the receiver always forms an assessment in Stage

1, but that her reassessments in the following two stages depend on whether she

searches for additional information and/or communicates with others.

The -axis reflects the level of uncertainty the receiver has in any given stage

when assessing the truthfulness of news. When evaluating news, the receiver

is either ignorant, meaning she is not able to tell whether the news is true or

not, certain, meaning she feels certain that the news are either fake or true, or

uncertain, meaning she is unsure about the level of credibility.

In Stage 1, the reader makes a first assessment concerning the truthfullness of

a news she received before. At this stage, she only relies on information directly

connected with the news, so she does not search for further information on the

topic or communicate with anyone else. If it is impossible for the receiver to

build a first opinion on the level of credibility due to lack of information, she is

in the ignorance zone. A receiver in the uncertainty zone has some information

to consider in order to come to a conclusion of whether the news is true or not,

but she cannot form a final judgment without further research. If the receiver

is certain that the news is false (or true), for example because she is an expert

in the field, she is in the certainty zone above or below the -axis. A reason for

why receivers could be in the certainty truth zone is that they are unaware that

the news could be fake news.

In Stage 2, the receiver chooses to collect more information. This stage is

optional as not all receivers decide to engage in further research. Readers from

all three zones (ignorance, uncertainty, certainty) may choose it to be unworthy

of their time to research the article’s background. If she decides to search,

it is possible that the reader finds information that confirms her opinion or

contradicts it, directing her in a completely new direction. In the context of fake

news, the receiver is not always able to find further information. Therefore, the

7

information search might be unsuccessful. Nevertheless, the reader still makes

a new judgment based on the fake news and the additional information found

in Stage 2. Depending on whether the reader can find further confirming or

contradicting information, her initial assessment from the first stage will be

strengthened, neutralized or weakened, relocating her on the spectrum of the

certainty levels as indicated by the five grey boxes in the end of each stage.

In Stage 3, the receiver may communicate with others. Her judgment, which

is either developed directly in the first stage (only based on the fake news) or in

the second stage (based on fake news and additional information), will direct the

receiver to Stage 3. While she has already developed a more or less sound opinion

on the credibility, this stage introduces group dynamics and thus potentially

has the power to overthrow the receiver’s previous opinion. The third stage is

optional as the second one. Moreover, the receiver has the possibility to search

again for additional information in Stage 2. With regard to fake news, this stage

can be seen as the group phase. The opinion and feedback from other people

can further influence the receiver’s opinion on whether the news is trustworthy.

4 Experimental Set-Up

The experiment was conducted with 240 undergraduate and graduate students

between the ages of 19 and 25 (on average 21 years old). Subjects had no prior

knowledge with regard to the topic of the experiment. They were instructed

to make an estimation of the value of an average German train station, the

Koblenz main station, and promised a reward in the form of chocolate, should

they guess correctly within a margin of error of +/- 10% of a supposedly correct

value. Subjects had to repeat this evaluation after every stage as it served as

the basis for comparison between the treatment groups. The reward was chosen

to symbolize a mild but not too high interest in the topic, comparable to a

stituation in which a subject wants to find out whether a news article is true

when there is no direct incentivizing to do so. While the instructions and answer

spaces were given in an online form, the experiment was administered personally

for two reasons. First of all, optional additional information was partly distrib-

uted in print as will be explained in the following. Secondly, the presence of the

experimenters prevented subjects from conducting further research online. The

task of evaluating a train station was chosen specifically so that subjects would

be in a state of ignorance at the beginning of the task, meaning they did not

have any prior knowledge. This refers to the state subjects are in before they

are divided into treatment groups and primed accordingly.

Stage 1: Before subjects made their first assessment, they received additional

information claiming that the Deutsche Bahn (DB) had bought a comparable

main station in the Netherlands for 800m. This high number served as ananchor to subjects, who were not likely to have background knowledge on eval-

uating train stations. The article was, however, completely fictional, meaning

the anchor was misleading participants towards choosing an unreasonably high

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price. In order to determine the anchor, a control treatment was instructed

with the task of evaluating the train station as described above but without the

additional article including the anchor. One of the experiment’s aims was ex-

amining how much this anchor would affect participants in different treatments

with regard to the level of awareness of fake news they had and with regard to

how much authority they attributed to the publisher of the news:

No Awareness Awareness Certainty Fake

Authority

Confimatory

Contradictory

No Authority

Confimatory

Contradictory

Table 1: Treatment Groups

There were three different treatments pertaining to the level of awareness

that the topic of interest in the experiment could be fake news, see Table 1.

The first awareness level was No Awareness, which means that subjects were

not previously informed about the topic of the experiment and received no hints

that the information they were given might be fictional. The second awareness

level was Awareness, which included an article about fake news and how people

do not check facts anymore in order to make the participants aware that the topic

might be of relevance for the following experiment. The third awareness level

was Certainty Fake. Subjects in this awareness level were informed beforehand

that the news they were going to receive were completely false.

With regard to authority there were two different treatments differing in the

respective information about DB’s strategy and acquisition plan, see Table 1.

The first authority level was Authority, meaning that subjects received a news

that was supposedly published by an authority figure. In this condition, it was

claimed in the given information that the DB themselves had released the news

in their annual report. The second level of authority was No Authority. In

this treatment subjects received a news that was supposedly based on rumors.

In particular, subjects were merely instructed that the information comes from

someone on the street, meaning it was not the DB that had released the news

but someone without authority.

After having been primed with the respective level of awareness and author-

ity, participants had to give their first estimate of the main station’s value in

m. They further had to self-assess how certain they were that their answer wascorrect by means of reporting how likely they thought it was that they would

receive the reward. This report served as an indicator for whether participants

believed the article or not. For subjects who estimated the value of the main

station to be close to the anchor value, a high level of certainty would indicate

that they believed the news.

9

Stage 2: In the second stage, subjects were presented with the option of

spending approximately two minutes of their time scanning further articles

about the first information they received. Two of the articles were confirmatory

of DB’s plans while two were questioning them and four more had nothing to do

with the plans, see Appendix 1. The two critical articles specifically mentioned

that the price of 800m would be “ridiculously high” and one of them, a blog

post, even called the first information “fake news.” These articles were intended

to drive subjects towards the certainty fake zone while the confirmatory ones

did the opposite.

This second stage was designed to reflect the research people have to do

when they want to find out whether a news is true or false. The effort and time

requirement of reading further articles, some of which are not even relevant, rep-

resents the opportunity costs of doing further research. The partly confirmatory

articles represent the fact that many fake news authors publish the same story

on different domains in order to achieve greater credibility, see Metzger (2007).

The contradicting articles represent the fruitful part of the search for further

information and could help subjects in their following estimations. They were

designed to follow a consider-the-opposite approach like the one, Mussweiler et

al. (2000) used in their experiment. The articles were photoshopped to look like

they came from fake news websites. For example, the URL of the fake Fox News

website read “foxnews.ru.co” instead of “foxnews.com” and the article printout

from the German newspaper “BILD” was in English, see Appendix 1.

Subjects could, however, also choose to continue without reading the infor-

mation as, in real life, people also have the option of accepting what they read

without questioning it. Either way, they were asked to estimate the value of the

main station and the certainty with which they expected to receive a reward

again in stage two. Additionally, subjects were asked to provide the number of

the article that they found most helpful in their new estimation so that it could

be analyzed which articles were most relevant.

Stage 3: In stage three, each treatment group from the 2x3 matrix of differ-

ent authority and awareness levels from Stage 1 was further split in half, see

Table 1. One half of the participants of each treatment was in the Confirma-

tory Friends condition. They received the information that, when they were

discussing the task with their friends, they found that their friends had made

a similar estimate. This treatment was intended to reassure subjects regarding

the certainty zone they were tending towards. The other half of the subjects

was in the Contradictory Friends condition. They received the information that

their friends had made an estimate much lower than their own. This treatment

was intended to push subjects towards uncertainty or ignorance. Afterwards,

subjects were again asked to enter their new estimate and rate their certainty.

This stage was designed to put subjects in a setting for conformity pressure.

If subjects that had previously rated their certainty of the correctness of their

estimate as high changed their estimate due to friends having a different opinion,

this could indicate their sensitivity to conformity pressure.

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Figure 3: Experimental set-up in the model of judgment formation

Figure 3 summarizes graphically where the different priming situates sub-

jects in the model of judgment formation discussed in Section 3. Concerning

the level of awareness, subjects in the Certainty Fake condition will be situ-

ated in the certainty fake zone of the model in the first phase. Subjects in the

Awareness condition will be in the uncertainty or ignorance zone. Some might

already suspect that the news does not sound reasonable, some might not have

a tendency yet, and some might lean towards believing the news. Subjects in

the No Awareness condition are primed to be situated somewhere between igno-

rance and certainty truth. As they did not receive any priming, many subjects

will not consider the option of the news being fake and thus start with a high

perceived certainty of the news being true. Others might be careful with their

judgment regardless of priming and thus be in the ignorance or uncertainty

zone. Concerning subjects’ search in Stage 2, the two partly confirming articles

(BILD, Blog) push subjects more in the certainty fake zone whereas the other

two partly contradicting articles (Daily News, Fox News) were more in the cer-

tainty truth zone. The group phase in Stage 3 then pictures the two treatments

at this stage: The Confirmatory Friends condition should position subjects in

the certainty fake or certainty truth zone, whereas the Contradictory Friends

condition should drive subjects away from the certainty zones.

5 Hypotheses

The first hypothesis is concerned with the awareness treatments. In the treat-

ment without awareness, we hypothesize that subjects will not consider the

option that the news could be false. The only reason they would adjust away

from the anchor is because they were evaluating a different train station. In the

treatment with awareness, we hypothesize that some subjects will think that

the information could be fake with a certain probability. This will lead them to

adjust further downwards from the given anchor than those with no awareness.

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We further hypothesize that those subjects who were told that the news is fake

even before reading it will still be influenced by the anchor as they do not have

any other information they can depend on.

H1a: Subjects will adjust the least from the anchor in the No Awareness con-

dition.

H1b: Subjects in the Awareness condition will adjust less from the anchor than

those in the Certainty Fake condition.

The second hypothesis is concerned with the different authority treatments.

In the treatment with authority, we hypothesize that people will have more trust

in the information than when they hear it from someone on the street. This

would lead them to adjust less than those in the treatment without authority.

H2: In the treatments with authority, subjects will adjust less from the anchor

than in the treatments without authority.

The third hypothesis is concerned with the second stage of the experiment.

We hypothesize that the condition in which most subjects will choose to read

further information will be the Awareness condition. Subjects in this condition

are more aware of the possible fakeness and will, thus, want to find out more.

The second in terms of the number of people choosing to read further infor-

mation will be the No Awareness condition. The third will be the Certainty

Fake condition, merely because there is no potential gain from reading further

information in the Certainty Fake condition.

H3: In the Awareness condition, more subjects will want to look for further

information than in the No Awareness condition. Subjects from the Cer-

tainty Fake condition will conduct the least further research.

The fourth hypothesis is concerned with the third stage of the experiment.

Those subjects who were in the Confirmatory Friends treatment will have no

reason to adjust their estimate. Those who were in the Contradicting Friends

treatment, however, will adjust their estimate downwards as they were told that

their friends’ estimate was lower than theirs.

H4a: Those subjects whose friends made a similar estimate will not adjust their

estimate.

H4b: Those subjects whose friends made a lower estimate will adjust their

estimate downwards.

The fifth hypothesis is concerned with subjects’ development throughout

the process of judgment formation. We hypothesize that gaining additional

information in each stage will help subjects to understand that the anchor was

set too high and thus lead them to adjust their estimate downward.

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H5: As subjects gain more information throughout the stages, they will adjust

their estimate away from the anchor.

The following hypotheses pertain to the certainty level. Hypothesis 6 is

concerned with subjects’ certainty of whether they made a good estimate in the

first stage. We hypothesize that subjects in the No Awareness condition will be

most certain of their answers in the first stage because they are not aware of

the fact that fake news might be involved in the experiment.

H6: Subjects in the No Awareness condition will be most certain of their an-

swers in the first stage.

We further hypothesize that subjects will exhibit an authority bias, meaning

those in the Authority condition will be more certain of their answers than those

in the No Authority condition.

H7: Subjects in the Authority condition will be more certain of their answers

than subjects in the No Authority condition.

As subjects gain more information, they will be better equipped to make

an accurate estimate and thus, their certainty will increase from the first to

the second stage. In the Confirmatory Friends treatment, subjects will feel

confirmed in their estimate because their friends have made a similar one. This

will lead their certainty of their estimate to increase from stage two to stage

three. In the Contradicting Friends treatment, however, subjects will feel less

certain about their estimate because their friends have made a much lower one.

H8a: Certainty will increase from stage two to stage three for subjects in the

Confirmatory Friends condition.

H8b: Certainty will decrease from stage two to stage three for subjects in the

Contradicting Friends condition.

6 Results and Discussion

First of all, the control treatment differed significantly from all other treatments,

see Appendix 2. While the control treatment had a mean of 110.75m, even thelowest of the remaining treatments, being Certainty Fake/No Authority, exhib-

ited 213m estimates on average, see Table 2. This means that an anchoring

effect occurred in all treatments. For detailed tables and statistical analysis of

all results, please refer to Appendix 2-14.


Stage 1 2 1 2 1 2

Authority

645

508 309 294 296 293

No Authority

618

560 284 290 234 213

Table 2: Experimental Results — Estimate Mean Stage 1 and 2

13

Results with regard to the different awareness levels were partly as expected.

H1a can be confirmed as subjects in the No Awareness condition were signifi-

cantly (at the 1% level) more influenced by the anchor than those in the other

awareness conditions across both authority conditions, see Appendix 3. How-

ever, H1b has to be rejected because there is no significant difference between

the Awareness and the Certainty Fake condition, see Appendix 4, 5. This could

mean that an increased awareness induces subjects to reflect upon the given

information and realize the obvious fallacies in the article.

R1a: Subjects’ adjustments from the anchor were the smallest in the No Aware-

ness condition.

R1b: There was no significant difference between adjustments in the Awareness

and Certainty Fake condition.

There is no significant evidence for the second hypothesis with regard to

the difference in the two authority conditions. While there is a tendency for

subjects in the authority condition with the DB announcement to be slightly

more influenced by the anchor in all awareness conditions, these differences are

not statistically significant, see Appendix 4, 5. The insignificant results could

have been caused by the anchoring effect merely overshadowing the authority

bias.

R2: In the Authority condition, subjects adjusted insignificantly less than in

the No Authority condition.

As expected, with respect to the third hypothesis, subjects in the awareness

condition decided to read further information more often than those in the

other conditions. 60 subjects from the Awareness condition, 50 from the No

Awareness condition and only ten out of 80 from the Certainty Fake condition

read the provided articles, see Appendix 6. We attribute the decision to read

the articles by those from the Certainty Fake condition to either curiosity or a

misunderstanding of the purpose of the additional information as it provided no

further benefit to them.

R3: Most subjects looked for further information in the Awareness condition,

second most in the No Awareness condition, and almost none in the Cer-

tainty Fake condition.

Hypothesis 4a, namely the adjustment from the second to the third stage

in the Confirmatory Friends condition, can be accepted. There were either no

differences at all, or, in three cases, small and insignificant differences between

the second and third stage in all awareness levels and both authority conditions,

see Appendix 7. This is in line with the fact that subjects have no reason to

change their estimate when their friends agree with them. Hypothesis 4b, rep-

resenting the Contradicting Friends condition, can also be accepted. Subjects

adjusted downwards from stage two to stage three across all conditions. In all

14

but one treatment, the change was significant at the 1% or 5% level. In the

Certainty Fake/Authority condition, this downward adjustment was marginally

insignificant. This is surprising, especially since we see no reason for why par-

ticipants this treatment should behave differently than the others with regard

to this hypothesis, see Appendix 8. Since there were large outliers in this group,

however, we do not attribute meaning to the insignificance of changes in this but

not in other treatments. Overall, the results indicate that subjects are sensitive

to conformity pressure.

R4: Subjects’ estimates are influenced by their friends’ estimates.

In order to evaluate the fifth hypothesis, we compared the differences be-

tween the estimates in different stages, see Table 3. As the estimates from stage

one to stage three differ, we had to analyze which stage is responsible for how

much of these changes. Both information search in Stage 2 and friends’ opinions

in Stage 3 could be a source for change. For this, an additional paired t-test

for repeated-measure designs was conducted between the estimates in first and

second stage and the second and third stage. In the tests for the first and sec-

ond stage, only the difference in the No Awareness condition was significant,

see Appendix 9. This is reasonable as subjects in the No Awareness condition

realize that fake news could be involved only in the second stage and were, thus,

expected to adjust their estimate further from the anchor than subjects in the

other two awareness conditions. Moreover, it is interesting that the change in

the second stage, when further split in those participants who decided to read

further information and those who did not, is only significant for those par-

ticipants who read further information, see Appendix 10. With regard to the

articles the subjects found most relevant for their next estimate, there was no

correlation between the number of the article indicated as most helpful and the

change in the estimate.

R5: As subjects gained more information throughout the stages, they adjusted

their estimate away from the anchor.


Stage 1 to 2 2 to 3 1 to 2 2 to 3 1 to 2 2 to 3

AuthorityConfirmatory

-137.50 ***

+7.50

-60.00 ***

-15.000.00

-39.00 ***

-3.75-2.00

-43.00Contradictory

No AuthorityConfirmatory

-58.00**

+1.00

-76.50**

+6.750.00

-37.25***

-10.000.00

-31.50**

Contradictory

Significance Levels: *** 1% **5% *10%

Table 3: Experimental Results — Difference Stages 1 to 2 and 2 to 3

With regard to the sixth and seventh hypothesis, only the certainty level

in the No Awareness/Authority condition showed a tendency towards higher

15

certainty than the other treatments, see Appendix 11. This suggests that the

increased certainty due to a lack of awareness of fake news or an authority bias is

not enough by itself to cause an upward tendency. However, combining the two

effects, a slight difference compared to the other treatments can be observed.

R6: Subjects in the No Awareness condition were not significantly more certain

of their answers.

R7: Subjects in the Authority condition were not significantly more certain of

their answers than subjects in the No Authority condition.

Hypothesis 8a can be accepted as the level of certainty increases over the

course of the three stages. While there is no or little change in certainty in the

second stage, certainty increases in stage three, confirming the hypothesis that

subjects feel reassured by their friends having the same opinion. In hypothesis

8b, we expected that subjects would feel less certain if their friends had a dif-

ferent opinion than them. However, the results showed that subjects’ certainty

remained steady with no significant changes, see Appendix 11. This could be

explained by two effects balancing each other out. There could be a negative

effect on certainty as subjects were told that they were wrong in their judg-

ment. However, there could also be a positive effect because they, nevertheless,

gained new information in the third stage. Had their friends merely told them

that their estimate was wrong without giving a direction for adjustment, the

certainty might have decreased.

R8: Subjects are more certain of their opinion when their friends agree with

them. When their friends disagree with them but give them a direction

for adjustment, subjects remain steady in their certainty of their answer.

Another interesting finding in addition to the hypotheses is that, in gen-

eral, women were more influenced by the anchor than men in all treatments

for the first estimate, see Appendix 12. These results are in line with previous

experimental studies, for example Barber and Odean (2001) or Bengtsson et

al. (2005). However, this changes over the three periods, during which women

adjust more than men. This, on the one hand, indicates that additional in-

formation and the authority bias, as well as friends’ opinions, seem to have a

stronger effect on women. On the other hand, it could mean that men are more

certain of their estimates, which is true for almost all treatments. In five out of

six treatments, there is a tendency for men to be more certain of their estimates,

on average, than women. Only in the No Awareness condition do women appear

to be slightly more confident in their estimates than men, see Appendix 13, 14.

Gender differences are particularly interesting with regard to fake news as they

are a personal factor that allows for separation of people into target groups. It

is relevant because microtargeting of voters was an important factor in the U.S.

election which enabled campaign managers to target people more specifically

than ever before, see Kruikemeier et al. (2016). The same technology could be

used to target specific groups of readers.

16

R9: Men appear to be more confident in their estimates than women, yet there

is no significant evidence for this.

7 Limitations

Some limitations have to be taken into account in order to understand the re-

sults correctly. First of all, the sample consisted of students with a similar

background. Another drawback of the sample is connected to the intentional

setting in complete ignorance. None of our subjects had previous experience

with evaluating a train station, leading to a large spread of estimates. Large

outliers could have also been caused by the relatively small number of partici-

pants per treatment ( = 40, for Stage 3 = 20 respectively).

With regard to the different awareness treatments, the Certainty Fake con-

dition was very clear. In the No Awareness condition, subjects were not aware

of fake news. However, they might have also expected the news they were given

to be true merely because they did not expect to be lied to in an experiment.

With regard to the Awareness condition, however, it is difficult to prime sub-

jects with the right level of awareness in an experiment. In real life, even if

people are aware of fake news, they do not receive a reminder of that directly

before reading them. This could be one of the reasons why we could not find

significant differences between the Awareness and the Certainty Fake treatment

with regard to the magnitude of anchoring effects. An alternative procedure

could be to prime subjects more subtly by showing them different articles as

priming, only one of which would have been about fake news.

A further limitation concerning anchoring is the uncontrollability of self-

generated anchors. Subjects, even though they had as little prior knowledge as

possible, might have thought of instances when they heard a value connected

to the topic and produced this value in order to make a better estimate. As

our subjects were German, they, for example, could have thought of “Stuttgart

21.” The construction of the new train station including underground railways

is taking longer and costs more than expected, which is a topic often debated in

German mainstream news. Subjects might have, thus, taken the exorbitantly

high estimation for the total costs of the station of 10b as of 2016 as a self-generated anchor, biasing them upwards. This could explain large outliers.

In the second stage of our experiment, optional articles were supposed to

represent the search for further information. Even though some of these had

nothing to do with the first story, in a real information search, it would not

have been as easy to find the relevant articles. Furthermore, subjects read all

the given articles whereas in real life, the search is often canceled.

Our incentivizing was chosen so that subjects would have a mild motivation

to find out the truth. In real life, however, there is not always an incentive

to find out the truth as subjects do not always read articles for a specific pur-

pose. Especially with fake news, it is usually the sensational headline rather

than a previously formed motivation that leads the reader to explore the topic

discussed in the respective article. Furthermore, even though the experiment

17

had to be conducted in person due to the optional additional information and

to ensure that participants would not use other information sources than those

provided by us, an obvious drawback of this is an increased active participa-

tion effect. Due to the presence of the experimenters, subjects might have felt

obliged to read the additional information (even though, of course, they were

not intentionally pushed towards reading it). This means that, especially with

regard to the second stage, more participants might have chosen to read further

information on the topic than would have in real life.

In the third stage, a conversation with a friend is simulated in a highly

simplified manner. The obvious limitation when comparing this to real life is

that subjects were not able to reply and have a real conversation with a friend.

In a conversation, arguments for and against believing the information from

the beginning and reasons for why each friend reached their estimate would be

exchanged.

8 Conclusion

Overall, our results yielded by the experiment are in line with the findings

discussed in the literature review. This implies that the effect of anchoring as

well as the effects of awareness and authority on anchoring are applicable to

fake news.

There are manifold real life implications of these results. The most impor-

tant finding with regard to the dangers of fake news is that subjects in the

Certainty Fake condition were still anchored by the news. The following real

life implication is that fake news can still influence the reader even though she

knows they are false. This is problematic as it is difficult to undo anchoring

effects once they occurred, see LeBoeuf and Shafir (2009) or Wright and Ander-

son (1989). However, as the literature and the second stage of the experiment

showed, a consider-the-opposite approach can be useful for mitigating anchors,

see Mussweiler et al. (2000).

Nevertheless, awareness is a factor that was proven to decrease the anchor-

ing effects for fake news in our experiment. A higher awareness also led to a

higher willingness to search for additional information. This shows the impor-

tance of increasing people’s awareness as the crucial instrument for combating

fake news. In this respect, the experiment further demonstrated that a mun-

dane level of awareness from following the public debate around fake news is

not enough to reduce the reader’s bias. The experiment was conducted in an

environment where knowledge of fake news was widespread. Thus, even the No

Awareness condition likely had some level of awareness of fake news. Conse-

quently, it is important that awareness is spread and targeted more directly and

profoundly. One measure to achieve this could be including the evaluation of

source credibility more extensively in the curriculum at schools.

As this is one of the first papers researching the effect of fake news, future

research directions are abundant. Since our subjects were drawn from a pool

with a fairly homogenous background, it would be important to investigate the

18

effects of anchoring and fake news in a more diverse group of subjects. Especially

age could be a highly influential determinant of how easily subjects believe fake

news. As older subjects are not digital natives, they are likely to access or

at least have previously accessed news in a more traditional manner, such as

print. This could make them more sensitive to sensationalism and lack of source

credibility. Building on this, it should be investigated how the preferred medium

for accessing news is connected to the susceptibility to fake news. Furthermore,

as anchoring has been proven to exert an effect even on experts, see Mussweiler

et al. (2000), it would be interesting to see whether the same is true if the anchor

is additionally made less relevant through a fake news setting. Moreover, further

research directed at the question as to which personal factors cause a person to

be more susceptible to fake news should also be conducted.

Furthermore, the anchoring effects tested in this experiment were based on

numerical anchors. It remains to be seen whether qualitative aspects of fake

news trigger a similar effect in the reader. There is no prior research in this

direction, yet it could be interesting to test whether exposure to disparaging

information about someone can impair people’s view of that person even if the

information is known to be untrue.

Lastly, other heuristics and biases, such as the two other well-known heuris-

tics defined by Tversky and Kahneman (1974), namely the availability and the

representativeness heuristic, might influence information processing just as much

as anchoring. The present research does not aim to assign precedence to an-

choring over other heuristics; it should merely be seen as a starting point. The

various biases resulting from the aforementioned and other heuristics should

thus be investigated in future research.

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22

Supplementary Materials

1.1 Material and Methods

1.1.1 Experimental Design

1.1.2 Statistical Analysis

1.1.2.1 Welch Two Sample t-test between Control and Treatments

1.1.2.2 Welch Two Sample t-test between Treatments

1.1.2.3 ANOVA

1.1.2.4 Paired t-test – Estimate 2 to 3 (Conformatory)

1.1.2.5 Paired t-test – Estimate 2 to 3 (Contradictory)

1.1.2.6 Paired t-test – Estimate 1 to Estimate 2

1.1.2.7 Paired t-test – Estimate 1 to Estimate 2: No Awareness Treatment

1.2 Tables

1.3 Figures

1.1 Material and Methods

1.1.1 Experimental Design

Experiment Phase 1

Experiment Phase 2 – Further Information Search – Fake News

a) Daily News

b) Fox News

c) Blog

d) Bild

1.1.2 Statistical Analysis

1.1.2.1 Welch Two Sample t-test between Control and Treatments

Control – Authority No Awareness: 1% Level

Control – Authority Awareness: 1% Level

Control – Authority Fake Certainty: 1% Level

Control – No Authority No Awareness: 1% Level

Control – No Authority Awareness: 1% Level

Control – No Authority Fake Certainty: 1% Level

1.1.2.2 Welch Two Sample t-test between Treatments

Authority: No Awareness – Awareness

Estimate 1: 5% Level


Authority: No Awareness – Certainty Fake



Authority: Awareness – Certainty Fake

Estimate 1: Not significantly different


No Authority: No Awareness – Certainty Fake



No Authority: No Awareness – Awareness



No Authority: Awareness – Certainty Fake


No Awareness: Authority – No Authority



Awareness: Authority – No Authority



Certainty Fake: Authority – No Authority



1.1.2.3 ANOVA

Estimate 1 – ANOVA

Estimate 2 – ANOVA

1.1.2.4 Paired t-test – Estimate 2 to 3 (Conformatory)

No Awareness Authority: Not significantly different

No Awareness No Authority: Not significantly different

Awareness Authority: No difference in estimates

Awareness No Authority: No difference in estimates

Certainty Fake Authority: Not significantly different

Certainty Fake No Authority: No difference in estimates

1.1.2.5 Paired t-test – Estimate 2 to 3 (Contradictory)

No Awareness Authority: 1% level

No Awareness No Authority: 5% level

Awareness Authority: 1% level

Awareness No Authority: 1% level


Certainty Fake No Authority: 5% level

1.1.2.6 Paired t-test – Estimate 1 to Estimate 2

No Awareness Authority: 1% Level

No Awareness No Authority: 5% Level

Awareness Authority: Not significantly different

Awareness No Authority: Not significantly different


Certainty Fake No Authority: Not significantly different

1.1.2.7 Paired t-test – Estimate 1 to Estimate 2: No Awareness Treatment

“NO” Further Information Search: Not significantly different

“YES” Further Information Search: 1% Level

1.2 Tables

Table S1: Experimental Results – Means Treatment


Round 1 2 3 Average 1 2 3 Average 1 2 3 Average

Authoriy

Conformity 543.25 438.25 445.75 475.75 308.5 278.5 278.5 288.50 267.55 267.55 265.55 266.88

Contradictory 747 577 517 613.67 309.8 309.8 270.8 296.80 325 317.5 274.5 305.67

Average 645.125 507.625 309.15 294.15 296.275 292.525

No

Authoriy

Conformity 553 527 528 536.00 248.9 254.4 254.4 252.57 224.75 204.75 204.75 211.42

Contradictory 683.75 593.75 517.25 598.25 319.5 327.5 290.25 312.42 244 244 212.5 233.50

Average 618.375 560.375 284.2 290.95 234.375 224.375

Table S2: Experimental Results – Means Treatment – Round 1 to 2 and 2 to 3


Round 1 1 to 2 2 to

3 1 to 3 1

1 to

2

2 to

3 1 to 3 1 1 to 2

2 to

3 1 to 3

Authority

Conformity 543.25 -

105.00 7.50 -97.50 308.5

-

30.00 0.00 -30.00 267.55 0.00 -2.00 -2.00

Contradictory 747 -

170.00

-

60.00

***

-230.00

*** 309.8 0.00

-

39.00

***

-39.00

** 325 -7.50

-

43.00

-50.50

*

Average 645.125 -137.5

*** 309.15 -15 296.275 -3.75

No

Authority

Conformity 553 -26.00 1.00 -25.00 248.9 5.50 0.00 5.50 224.75 -20.00 0.00 -20.00

Contradictory 683.75 -90.00

-

76.50

**

-166.5

*** 319.5 8.00

-

37.25

***

-29.25 244 0.00

-

31.50

**

-31.5

**

Average 618.375 -58

** 284.2 6.75 234.375 -10

Significance Levels: ***1% **5% *10%

Table S3: Experimental Results – Further Information Search per Treatment

Decision No Awareness Awareness Certainty Fake

Authority

Yes 23 31 6

No 17 9 34

No

Authority

Yes 27 29 4

No 13 11 36

Table S4: Experimental Results – Further Information Search per Treatment (in %)

Decision No Awareness Awareness Certainty Fake

Authority

Yes 57.50 77.50 57.50

No 42.50 22.50 85.00

No

Authority

Yes 67.5 72.5 10

No 32.5 27.5 90

Table S5: Experimental Results – Certainty Treatments (in %)


Round 1 2 3 Average 1 2 3 Average 1 2 3 Average

Authority

Conformity 53 52 60 55 43 42 48 44.33 51 51 58 53.33

Contradictory 57 61 60 59 45 47 46 46 40 38 41 39.67

Average 55 56.5 60 44 44.5 47 45.5 44.5 49.5

No

Authority

Conformity 48 48 54 50 42 44 55 47 40 40 47 42.33

Contradictory 37 38 39 38 45 46 45 45.33 42 42 45 43

Average 42.5 43 46.5 43.5 45 50 41 41 46

Table S6: Experimental Results – Certainty Treatments – Round 1 to 2 and 2 to 3 (in %)


Round 1 1 to 2 2 to

3 1 to 3 1

1 to

2

2 to

3 1 to 3 1 1 to 2

2 to

3 1 to 3

Authority

Conformity 53 -1 8 7 43 -1 6 5 51 0 7 7

Contradictory 57 4 -1 3 45 2 -1 1 40 -2 3 1

Average 55 22,5 20

No

Authority

Conformity 48 0 6 6 42 2 11 13 40 0 7 7

Contradictory 37 1 1 2 45 1 0 -45 42 0 3 3

Average 42,5 22,5 21

1.3 Figures

Figure S1: Experimental Results – Plot of Means

Figure S2: Experimental Results – Further Information Search

Figure S3: Experimental Results - Certainty Level Treatments

fake news – does perception matter more than the truth ... · as fake news has become a widely...

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