Apr 10, 2021 09:00:00

People with high emotional intelligence turned out to be good at finding fake news

The spread of fake news has become a major problem in the modern age of the Internet, and researchers are

trying to detect fake news using AI and developing games that can gain resistance to fake news. I will. A new study shows that the higher the emotional intelligence (EQ), which perceives and controls the emotions of oneself and others, the better the ability to detect fake news.

Detecting fake news on Facebook: The role of emotional intelligence
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0246757

Fake news: people with greater emotional intelligence are better at spotting misinformation
https://theconversation.com/fake-news-people-with-greater-emotional-intelligence-are-better-at-spotting-misinformation-157265

As a result of the increase in the number of Internet users and SNS users, fake spread around SNS at important political events such as the referendum in 2016 in the United Kingdom asking whether to leave the EU and the US presidential election in the same year. We know that the news has influenced the results. In addition, fake news was spread in the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection (COVID-19) that occurred in 2020, conspiracy theory that 'the epidemic of COVID-19 is caused by 5G' spread, and fake news spread for vaccines. SNS companies are being chased to prevent it.

While some people who spread fake news have a strong political will to change the public's opinion and influence politics, many of them benefit from the spread of fake news. The purpose is to be financially profitable.

People who spread fake news for monetary gains make extreme or barbaric claims to attract the public's attention, entice them to visit their own websites, and generate advertising revenue. I'm getting it. Fake news tends to be more extreme, as the more extreme the claim, the more likely it is that people will click and share it.

While fake news has become a problem in many ways, researchers are studying 'what kind of people are likely to be fooled by fake news? What kind of people have a high ability to detect fake news?' Is proceeding. In 2019,

Gordon Penny Cook, a psychologist at the University of Regina, Canada, uses news topics about the biased political situation in the United States to assess the differences between subjects who are susceptible to fake news and those who are not. Did. As a result, it was found that 'whether or not you can think analytically' is one of the main factors for whether or not you can see through fake news.

In addition, research teams at the University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom conducted experiments to further develop and complement Penny Cook's work. The research team presented 87 subjects living in the United Kingdom with news on a variety of topics such as health, crime, immigration, education and climate change. Some of the news was correct and some was fake, and the subjects answered how credible they were about each news. When the research team analyzed the subjects' responses, the subjects were unable to distinguish between real news and fake news with 100% accuracy, but on average they tended to be suspicious of fake news. ..

Because these fake news often contains 'overly emotional and exaggerated content,' the research team said, 'Emotional intelligence that perceives and controls one's emotions and understands the emotions of others. The higher the value, the more it is possible to distinguish between the emotional part of the content and the facts, and the higher the ability to detect fake news. ' Therefore, we conducted a test to measure emotional intelligence (EQ) on subjects and investigated the relationship between the found EQ and the ability to detect fake news.

As a result, as expected by the research team, it became clear that 'people with higher EQ have a higher ability to detect fake news.' Existing studies have shown that emotional intelligence can be improved through training, so the team will take this result to 'improve people's EQ to improve their ability to detect fake news.' He is working on the development of 'method'.