Rethinking the Link Between Cognitive Reflection and Susceptibility to Misinformation: On the Distinction Between Hard and Soft News

The literature presents two contrasting accounts on the influence of cognitive reflection (tendency to override intuition by engaging in deliberation or analytical thinking) on susceptibility to misinformation. According to the classical reasoning account, rooted in research on evaluation of mainly soft news (sensational, human-interest stories), cognitive reflection improves truth discernment. According to the motivated reasoning account, rooted in research on argument construction about hard (policy-related) issues, cognitive reflection enhances political bias. We integrate these two accounts by examining how the distinction between soft and hard news interacts with individuals’ reasoning style to shape their capacity for truth discernment and susceptibility to political bias. Initially, we conducted an integrative data analysis (IDA) by synthesizing data from existing misinformation studies and incorporating independent ratings of news items along a hard-soft news dimension. We also conducted two experiments—one in the U.S., one in Greece—where participants viewed soft or hard political news. Across the IDA and experiments, participants higher on cognitive reflection were more prone to political bias, but only when evaluating hard news. Cognitive reflection was associated with improved truth discernment for both soft and hard news in the IDA, but not consistently so in the experiments. The findings reconcile discrepancies in the misinformation literature by demonstrating that cognitive reflection is not a one-size-fits-all solution to misinformation: although it is associated with improvement in truth discernment, it is also linked to exacerbated political bias in the case of hard news. We discuss implications of news softening for what qualifies as misinformation.