Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA.
ULR 7369-URePSSS-Unité de Recherche Pluridisciplinaire Sport Santé Société, Sherpas, Univ. Lille, Univ. Artois, Univ. Littoral Côte d'Opale, Liévin, France.
Sci Rep. 2023 Aug 8;13(1):12860. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-39807-x.
Individual factors such as cognitive capacities matter when one is requested to spot fake news. We suggest, however, that social influence-specifically as exercised by an authoritarian leader-might matter more if one is expected to agree with the fake news. We developed a single-item prototype measure of leadership styles and recruited participants from four Western democratic countries (Australia, Canada, United Kingdom, United States, N = 501) who identified their immediate boss as an autonomous, paternalistic, or authoritarian leader. Then they were asked to evaluate the accuracy of several fake news articles and their expectations to agree with their boss when asked about these articles. People with authoritarian bosses were less accurate in spotting fake news (Cohen's d = 0.32) compared to employees with autonomous bosses. The bigger effect, however, was that they would agree with their boss about the fake news article when it was shared by their authoritarian boss compared to employees with autonomous (Cohen's d = 1.30) or paternalistic bosses (Cohen's d = 0.70). We argue that in addition to effects on the perceived accuracy of information, social influence, conformity, and obedience are crucial and unacknowledged factors of how misinformation may be maintained and propagated by authoritarian leaders.
当被要求识别假新闻时，个人因素，如认知能力很重要。然而，我们认为，如果人们期望认同假新闻，那么社会影响——特别是专制领导人的社会影响——可能更为重要。我们开发了一种领导力风格的单项原型衡量标准，并从四个西方民主国家（澳大利亚、加拿大、英国和美国）招募了参与者，这些参与者将其直接上司认定为自主型、家长式或专制型领导者。然后，要求他们评估几个假新闻文章的准确性，并在被问到这些文章时，预期与他们的老板达成一致。与拥有自主型老板的员工相比，拥有专制型老板的员工在识别假新闻方面准确性较低（Cohen's d=0.32）。然而，更大的影响是，当假新闻文章由专制型老板分享时，他们更倾向于与老板达成一致，而不是与自主型（Cohen's d=1.30）或家长式老板（Cohen's d=0.70）达成一致。我们认为，除了对信息感知准确性的影响外，社会影响、从众和服从是专制领导人如何维持和传播错误信息的关键且未被承认的因素。
