The Evolutionary Psychology of Conflict and the Functions of Falsehood
Open accessAbstract
Truth is commonly viewed as the first casualty of war. As such the current circulation of fake news, conspiracy theories and other hostile political rumors is not a unique phenomenon but merely another example of how people are motivated to dispend with truth in situations of conflict. In this chapter, we theorize about the potentially evolved roots of this motivation and outline the structure of the underlying psychology. Specifically, we focus on how the occurrence of intergroup conflict throughout human evolutionary history has built psychological motivations into the human mind to spread information that (a) mobilize the ingroup against the outgroup, (b) facilitate the coordination of attention within the group and (c) signal commitment to the group to fellow ingroup members. In all these instances, we argue, human psychology is designed to select information that accomplishes these goals most efficiently rather than to select information on the basis of its veracity. Accordingly, we hypothesize that humans in specific instances are psychologically prepared to prioritize misinformation over truth.
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Because there is a large volume of people to connect with online, there are significantly more extreme voices to affiliate with than in prior social groups limited by geography.
“Because there is such a large volume of people to connect with in the online context, there are significantly more extreme voices to affiliate with than there were in prior social groups that were limited by geography (Petersen et al. 2020, Törnberg 2022).”
From Social Media and Morality. (2024) · cites this paper as Petersen et al. 2020
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References 44 · Cited by 30
- Authors
- Petersen, M. B., Osmundsen, M., & Tooby, J.
- Publisher
- Center for Open Science
- Published
- 2020-08-29
- Pages
- 131-151
- OpenAlex
- W4293751897
- Cited by
- 30
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 4
- FWCI
- 48.59
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
- Keywords
- evolutionary psychology, intergroup conflict, misinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, political rumors, truth-seeking, group commitment, war
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