How might a dislike option affect how people evaluate and engage with online content?

This research investigated how people respond to true and false news, and how the type of social endorsement associated with news posts influences belief and engagement intentions. Across three experiments (total N = 1084), participants viewed true and false news accompanied by varying levels of positive (likes) and negative (dislikes) endorsement. Participants were sensitive to post veracity, rating true news as more believable (large effect), and showing greater willingness to like true content, dislike false content and share true content (small effects). Positive social endorsement by others reliably increased belief, like and share intentions and decreased dislike intentions (small effects). Negative endorsement reduced belief (Experiment 1) and like intentions and increased dislike intentions (small effects), but had no detectable impact on share intentions. When negative endorsement was presented alongside high positive endorsement, this reduced belief and like intentions, but only when the negative endorsement level was high, signalling divided opinion. These findings demonstrate that: 1) veracity has a strong effect on beliefs, and a small effect on engagement and 2) social cues—positive and negative—have a small but significant role in shaping how people evaluate and interact with online news. Our findings suggest that incorporating a dislike option on social media platforms could improve content evaluation by signalling epistemic rejection, though safeguards may be needed to mitigate risks of misuse.