Fake News, Fast and Slow - Deliberation Reduces Belief in False (But Not True) News Headlines

Aug 31, 2026

The study examines how deliberation affects susceptibility to political misinformation and “fake news.” The Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R) view predicts deliberation increases partisan bias because people rationalize ideologically consistent content, whereas the classical view predicts deliberation improves truth discernment when people can correct intuitive errors. Using a two-response paradigm with 1,635 participants, deliberation reduced belief in false headlines without increasing polarization, supporting accurate belief formation rather than partisan distortion.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryGeneral

FormatDOCX

Pages23

Reading Time8 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Theoretical accounts (MS2R vs classical reasoning)

Experimental design: two-response paradigm and baseline

Findings on false vs true headline belief

Polarization results and implications

Fake News, Fast and Slow: Deliberation Reduces Belief in False (But Not True) News Headlines Bence Bago1, David G. Rand2, and Gordon Pennycook3 1 Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, University of Toulouse Capitole 2 Sloan School and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 3 Hill/Levene Schools of Business, University of Regina Author Note Bence Bago HYPERLINK "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6905-1832" \h HYPERLINK "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6905-1832" https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6905-1832 Data, headlines, and additional online materials are openly available at the project’s Open Science Framework page ( HYPERLINK "http://osf.io/egy8p" \h osf.io/egy8p). We have no conflicts of interest to disclose. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Ethics and Governance of Artificial Intelligence Initiative of the Miami Foundation (David G. Rand and Gordon Pennycook), the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (David G. Rand and Gordon Pennycook), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Gordon Pennycook), ANR Grant ANR-17-EURE-0010 (Investissements d’Avenir program, Bence Bago), ANR Labex IAST (Bence Bago), and the Scientific Research Fund Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen, Bence Bago). Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Bence Bago, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, University of Toulouse Capitole, 21 Allée de Brienne, 31015, Toulouse, France. Email: HYPERLINK "mailto:bencebago@institution.edu" bencebago@institution.edu Abstract What role does deliberation play in susceptibility to political misinformation and “fake news”? The Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R) account posits that deliberation causes people to fall for fake news because reasoning facilitates identity-protective cognition and is therefore used to rationalize content that is consistent with one’s political ideology. The classical account of reasoning instead posits that people ineffectively discern between true and false news headlines when they fail to deliberate (and instead rely on intuition). To distinguish between these competing accounts, we investigated the causal effect of reasoning on media truth discernment using a two-response paradigm. Participants (N = 1,635 Mechanical Turkers) were presented with a series of headlines. For each paradigm, participants were first asked to give an initial, intuitive response under time pressure and concurrent working memory load. They were then given an opportunity to rethink their response with no constraints, thereby permitting more deliberation. We also compared these responses to a (deliberative) one-response baseline condition where participants made a single choice with no constraints. Consistent with the classical account, we found that deliberation corrected intuitive mistakes: Participants believed false headlines (but not true headlines) more in initial responses than in either final responses or the unconstrained one-response baseline. In contrast—and inconsistent with the MS2R account—we found that political polarization was equivalent across responses. Our data suggest that, in the context of fake news, deliberation facilitates accurate belief formation and not partisan bias. Keywords: fake news, misinformation, dual-process theory, two-response paradigm Fake News, Fast and Slow: Deliberation Reduces Belief in False (But Not True) News Headlines Although inaccuracy in news is nothing new, so-called fake news—“fabricated information that mimics news media content in form but not in organizational process or intent” (Lazer et al., 2018, p. 1094)—has become a focus of attention in recent years. Fake news represents an important test case for psychologists: What is it about human reasoning that allows people to fall for blatantly false content? Here we consider this question from a dual-process perspective, which distinguishes between intuitive and deliberative cognitive processing (Evans & Stanovich, 201

FAQs

What do the MS2R and classical accounts predict about deliberation and fake news?

MS2R predicts deliberation increases partisan bias and reduces accuracy, while the classical account predicts deliberation helps people correct mistakes and better discern truth from falsehood.

How was reasoning manipulated in the study?

Participants first provided an intuitive, time-pressured response under working memory load, then had an unconstrained opportunity to rethink their response; a one-response baseline was also included.

What was the main effect of deliberation on belief in headlines?

Deliberation corrected intuitive mistakes by reducing belief in false headlines, while leaving belief in true headlines unaffected.

Did increased deliberation change political polarization?

No. Polarization was equivalent across responses, indicating deliberation improved belief accuracy without partisan bias.

Aug 31, 2026

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