Focusing on fake news' contents: The association between ingroup identification, perceived outgroup threat, analytical-intuitive thinking and detecting fake news

This study aims to reveal the fake news content in the context of the social identity approach and to examine the mediating role of perceived outgroup on the association between ingroup identification and detecting fake news blaming ingroup, outgroup, or fictional groups. Study 1 found that fake news could be gathered under six themes: contacted-outgroup blaming, represented-outgroup blaming, outgroup derogation, outgroup appreciation, ingroup glorification, and phantom-mastermind blaming. In preregistered Study 2 with representative non-weird participants (N = 216), we examined the mediating role of perceived outgroup threat on the association between ingroup identification and detecting fake news revealed in Study 1. Perceived outgroup threat was only mediating for detecting outgroup-blaming fake news when intuitive and analytical thinking styles were controlled. Detecting ingroup-blaming fake news was associated with ingroup identification. Analytical thinking predicted only detecting phantom-mastermind-blaming fake news. Findings demonstrated that the contents of fake news play a vital role in detecting them, and variables pointing to content (i.e., ingroup identification for ingroup-blaming fake news, and perceived outgroup threat for outgroup-blaming fake news) are predictive for detecting fake news.

Automated summary

This study aims to uncover the nature of fake news within the framework of social identity and investigate how perceived outgroup plays a role in the association between ingroup identification and the detection of fake news targeting ingroup, outgroup, or fictional groups. The findings indicate that the content of fake news is diverse and can be categorized into six themes, with different predictive variables for different types of fake news.