Partisan bias in the identification of fake news

Published on July 1, 2021

In their recent article in Trends in Cognitive Science [1], Pennycook and Rand argue that lack of cognitive reflection is a major cause of fake-news susceptibility and that recent evidence contradicts the idea that people fall for fake news because of partisan bias. Although the proposed role of cognitive reflection is consistent with the evidence reviewed by the authors, their dismissal of partisan bias is: (i) based on a problematic conceptualization of partisan bias; and (ii) inconsistent with the evidence reviewed in their own article.

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