Insight problem solving ability predicts reduced susceptibility to fake news, bullshit, and overclaiming

Abstract

The information humans are exposed to increased demands upon our information selection strategies, resulting in reduced fact-checking and critical-thinking time. Research showed that problem-solving (traditionally measured using the CRT) negatively correlates with believing in false information. We argue that this result is specifically related to insight problem-solving. Insight is the result of parallel processing, characterized by filtering external noise, and, unlike cognitively controlled thinking, it does not suffer from the cognitive overload associated with processing multiple sources of information. We administered the CRAs (problems used to investigate insight problem-solving) as well as the CRT, 20 fake and real news headlines, the bullshit, and overclaiming scales to a sample of 61 participants. Results: insight problem-solving predicts better identification of fake news and bullshit (over and above traditional measures i.e., the CRT), and is associated with reduced overclaiming. These results have implications for understanding individual differences in susceptibility to believing false information.

Keywords:

• Fake news
• problem solving
• insight
• bullshit receptivity
• overclaiming

Acknowledgments

We thank Mike Thayer for helping with the data analysis of the study.

Authors’ contributions

Carola Salvi contributed to conceptualization, methodology, data curation, writing-original draft preparation. Nathaniel Barr contributed to data interpretation, writing. Joseph Dunsmoor and Jordan Grafman contributed to conceptualization, supervision, writing, reviewing, and editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The exact wording was:

Please rate your familiarity with each item on this questionnaire.  Use the scale below as a guide. 

     0     1        2        3        4        5        6

Never Heard                                           Very

Of It                                                     Familiar

For example, if the item said "Bill Clinton" or "Mexico", or "the Bible", you would probably write a '6' beside it because it is very familiar.  However, if the item said "Fred Gruneberg" (my next-door neighbor) you would write a '0' to indicate you never heard of him. 

e.g.,        6    Bill Clinton

              0    Fred Gruneberg

In other words, the difficulty of the items ranges from easy to impossible.

2 One of these foils, along with one of the actual terms had to be removed. El Puente was designated as a foil but is an actual Mayan dig site, while the real term hydroponics was misspelled as ‘hydoponics (sic)’ so we removed it from the analysis.

3 Specifically, the following instructions were given to participants to explain how to distinguish a solution via insight from one via analysis: You will decide whether the solution was reached with insight or with analysis. With INSIGHT means you experienced a so-called A-ha! moment and the solution came to mind as a sudden surprise. It won't be a huge Eureka, just a small surprise and it may be difficult to articulate how you reached the solution. STEP-BY-STEP it means that you reached the solution gradually, part by part. You might have used a deliberate strategy or just trial-and-error and you can report steps. We know it is not always obvious whether you used insight or step-by-step, and you may feel as though you used a mixture of both. But we need you to choose one the best you can, so please choose whichever method your solving process most closely resembles. No solution type is better or worse than the other; there are no right or wrong answers in reporting insight or analysis. Instructions used were similar to those used by Bowden and Jung-Beeman (2003).

4 The percentage scores were calculated by dividing the total number of CRA problems given (60) to the number of problems solved correctly, correctly via insight, correctly vis step-by-step, solved incorrectly, incorrectly via insight and incorrectly via step-by-step. The averages of these precents per person are reported in the text.

5 The precents were calculated by dividing the total number of CRT problems given (5) to the number of problems solved correctly. The averages of these precents per person are reported in the text.

6 Two participants were excluded since they solved the same number of problems via insight and step-by-step.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Smart Family Foundation of New York to JG. CS was supported in part by NIH training grant T32 NS047987. JD was supported by the NSF CAREER Award # 1844792 (PI J.E.D.).