In polarized political environments, conservatives are more likely than liberals to share misinformation, driven by a heightened desire for their group to achieve dominance, according to new research from the University of California-Irvine. However, in less polarized settings, misinformation-sharing decreases significantly, and the ideological divide all but disappears. The research has been published in the Journal of Marketing.
Previous studies have consistently found that conservatives are more likely to spread political misinformation than liberals, but there has been little exploration of whether specific situations, such as polarized political discourse, exacerbate this behavior. Given the global rise in political polarization and its damaging effects on democratic processes, the researchers sought to pinpoint the situational and ideological drivers of misinformation in an effort to identify potential solutions.
“The rise of misinformation during the 2020 U.S. election season caught our attention. Early on, we didn’t see much difference between Republicans and Democrats in sharing misinformation,” said study authors Xiajing Zhu (a PhD candidate) and Connie Pechmann (a professor of marketing).
“But as the election approached, there was a noticeable increase in misinformation coming from the Republican side. This made us curious: why were so many people posting misinformation on social media, and why did this change so dramatically during the election? In the long run, we want to better understand what drives the misinformation crisis and develop actionable interventions to mitigate both misinformation and polarization.”
To explore these dynamics, the researchers conducted a series of studies combining real-world data analysis, controlled experiments, and historical text analysis.
The first study used a dataset of fact-checked political statements by U.S. public figures, compiled by PolitiFact and spanning 2007 to 2016. Researchers augmented this dataset with additional information on the ideological affiliation of each public figure—conservative (Republican) or liberal (Democrat)—and categorized the topics of their statements as either highly polarized or less polarized. Polarization levels were determined using survey data from the Pew Research Center, which measured ideological disagreement on various political issues.
The researchers analyzed 3,532 statements that could be matched to Pew’s data, representing 36% of the original dataset. Using PolitiFact’s ratings, they measured the degree of misinformation in each statement and compared it across levels of polarization and ideology. They found that conservatives were more likely to share misinformation than liberals, but this pattern emerged only in highly polarized contexts. In less polarized situations, there was no significant difference in misinformation between the two groups.
The second study extended the analysis to a larger dataset, covering PolitiFact-rated statements from 2007 to 2022, and incorporated a monthly polarization index developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. This index measures the extent to which political news in a given month is polarized based on keywords related to conflict and division. Researchers examined 13,517 statements, with 59% made by conservatives and 41% by liberals.
The researchers used the polarization index to calculate changes in polarization over time and linked this trend to the level of misinformation in statements by public figures. The findings revealed that when polarization increased, conservatives were more likely to spread misinformation than liberals. However, in periods of declining polarization, this ideological gap in misinformation-sharing disappeared.
In the third study, the researchers conducted a controlled experiment to assess how manipulated levels of polarization influenced individuals’ willingness to share misinformation. They recruited 283 U.S. adults, evenly divided by ideology, to participate in an online survey. Participants were first exposed to quotes from political leaders that either framed interparty relations as cooperative (low polarization) or oppositional (high polarization). They were then shown a series of politically skewed, factually questionable social media posts designed to either support their own political group or attack the opposing group. Participants rated how likely they were to share these posts.
The experiment showed that conservatives exposed to high-polarization framing were more likely to express intent to share misinformation compared to liberals in the same condition. In the low-polarization condition, both groups showed comparable levels of intent to share misinformation. Further analysis revealed that the conservatives’ behavior was driven by an increased desire for their group to achieve dominance in polarized settings.
The fourth study replicated and extended the third by varying the type of misinformation participants encountered. The researchers recruited 581 U.S. adults, balanced by political ideology, and exposed them to either high- or low-polarization scenarios similar to those in Study 3. The misinformation posts were divided into two types: those that directly supported participants’ own political group and those that attacked the opposing group. Participants rated their likelihood of sharing these posts.
The results showed the same pattern as in Study 3: conservatives were more likely to share misinformation in high-polarization scenarios, regardless of whether the posts supported their ingroup or attacked the outgroup. Liberals, in contrast, did not show increased intent to share misinformation in polarized settings. These findings confirmed that the specific type of misinformation did not affect conservatives’ behavior; rather, it was the heightened desire for group dominance in polarized contexts that drove their actions.
“Our findings don’t suggest that conservatives are inherently prone to spreading misinformation,” the researchers told PsyPost. “Instead, it’s situational. Polarization and perceived group threats are the key factors driving this behavior, and these broader contexts are what need to be addressed.”
The fifth study simulated real-world social media conditions to examine the impact of polarization on misinformation-sharing. The researchers recruited 288 U.S. adults and presented them with a mock social media newsfeed containing seven articles. The articles were based on real news stories but were manipulated to either emphasize conflict and division (high polarization) or highlight bipartisanship and cooperation (low polarization). After reading the newsfeed, participants were shown politically skewed misinformation posts and asked to rate their likelihood of sharing them.
Conservatives who viewed the high-polarization newsfeed were more likely to share misinformation than liberals. However, when exposed to the low-polarization newsfeed, conservatives and liberals were equally unlikely to share misinformation. This demonstrated that polarization within news content could provoke misinformation-sharing behavior, particularly among conservatives, by activating their desire for ingroup dominance.
“We were surprised by how much influence media and social media can have on misinformation sharing,” Zhu and Pechmann said. “We showed participants a simulated social media newsfeed with seven articles, either highly polarized or less polarized, similar to the content people encounter daily. We found that a polarized newsfeed caused conservatives to share more misinformation as a way to support their group. In contrast, liberals did not react this way, and even conservatives behaved differently when exposed to less polarized newsfeeds. This raises an important question: what will happen when people are exposed to polarized content in the media and on social platforms every day?”
The sixth study analyzed nearly a century of speeches delivered by U.S. presidents to investigate how political polarization influenced expressions of ingroup dominance. The researchers examined 18,315 speeches by 16 presidents, evenly divided by political ideology, from 1929 to 2023. They compared speeches delivered during election campaigns (high polarization) to those delivered after elections (low polarization) and analyzed the use of first-person plural pronouns, such as “we” and “our,” in conjunction with positive or negative language. These linguistic markers were used to measure the presidents’ motive to achieve ingroup dominance.
The analysis found that conservative presidents expressed more ingroup dominance than liberal presidents during elections. However, in less polarized, postelection contexts, this pattern diminished and even slightly reversed. These findings underscored the role of polarization in triggering conservatives’ ingroup dominance motives, which in turn influenced their rhetoric and potentially their actions.
“Polarization plays a big role in how misinformation spreads,” Zhu and Pechmann concluded. “Conservatives are more likely to share misinformation when they feel their group is under threat or in competition, such as during elections. However, if not in a polarized context, conservatives and liberals share misinformation at similar levels. Thus, to address misinformation, we need to focus on reducing polarization and the motivations behind it, not just correcting false information.”
The study, “Political Polarization Triggers Conservatives’ Misinformation Spread to Attain Ingroup Dominance,” was published June 16, 2022.