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Cited by 32Misinformation and Its ImpactsSocial Media and PoliticsSocial and Intergroup Psychology

Moralization and extremism robustly amplify myside sharing

Open access
Marie, Antoine, Altay, Sacha, Strickland, Brent·2023·PNAS Nexus
DOI 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad078PMC PMC10129063
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Abstract

We explored whether moralization and attitude extremity may amplify a preference to share politically congruent (“myside”) partisan news and what types of targeted interventions may reduce this tendency. Across 12 online experiments (N = 6,989), we examined decisions to share news touching on the divisive issues of gun control, abortion, gender and racial equality, and immigration. Myside sharing was systematically observed and was consistently amplified when participants (i) moralized and (ii) were attitudinally extreme on the issue. The amplification of myside sharing by moralization also frequently occurred above and beyond that of attitude extremity. These effects generalized to both true and fake partisan news. We then examined a number of interventions meant to curb myside sharing by manipulating (i) the audience to which people imagined sharing partisan news (political friends vs. foes), (ii) the anonymity of the account used (anonymous vs. personal), (iii) a message warning against the myside bias, and (iv) a message warning against the reputational costs of sharing “mysided” fake news coupled with an interactive rating task. While some of those manipulations slightly decreased sharing in general and/or the size of myside sharing, the amplification of myside sharing by moral attitudes was consistently robust to these interventions. Our findings regarding the robust exaggeration of selective communication by morality and extremism offer important insights into belief polarization and the spread of partisan and false information online.

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  • Many studies have found that misinformation and moral outrage are often closely intertwined.

    “Many studies have found that misinformation and moral outrage are often closely intertwined (Marie et al. 2023, Vosoughi et al. 2018).”

    From Social Media and Morality. (2024) · cites this paper as Marie et al. 2023

    The Discussion of Experiments 1–4 reports that moralizing a political issue amplified participants’ willingness to share politically congruent news, including fake news. That supports a link between moralization and misinformation sharing, but the paper does not establish a link specifically with moral outrage or show that the two are often intertwined. (LLM, conf=0.83)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Moralization may amplify a preference to share both true and false politically congruent partisan news, which can amplify polarization.

    “Other work finds that moralization may amplify a preference to share both true and false politically congruent partisan news, which can amplify polarization (Marie et al. 2023).”

    From Social Media and Morality. (2024) · cites this paper as Marie et al. 2023

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Cited by

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Authors
Marie, A., Altay, S., & Strickland, B.
Affiliations
  • Aarhus University (DK)
  • University of Zurich (CH)
  • Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
Corresponding author
Marie, Antoine
ORCID
Venue
PNAS Nexus
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2023-04-01
Volume
2
Issue
4
Pages
pgad078-pgad078
ISSN
2752-6542 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad078
PMC
PMC10129063
OpenAlex
W4363678960
Cited by
32
References
9
Citations by year
2026: 19 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2021: 1
FWCI
13.32
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PNAS Nexus (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • HAL (submittedVersion)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, public-domain)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
Funders
European Research Council
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
  • Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
Keywords
myside bias, moralization, attitude extremity, news sharing, fake news, partisan news, belief polarization, online information spread, social media, reputational costs, gun control, abortion, immigration

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