This Week in Misinformation: Avoiding the Above-Average Effect
I am passionate about the fight against misinformation. I believe every problem facing our society is made worse by the rampant spread of false and misleading information, and would be made better by increased news literacy education. Each week I’ll share links to excellent reporting tackling this important issue.
Something I learned while studying social psychology in college has stuck with me all these years later. It’s a concept that has been called many things — illusory superiority, superiority bias and the above-average effect are the most common. Basically, it’s a form of cognitive bias in which people tend to overestimate their own abilities and qualities relative to others. In one study, an overwhelming majority (I think it was about 70 or 80 percent) of people considered themselves above-average drivers. Which, mathematically speaking, is of course impossible.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately when it comes to the spread of misinformation and news literacy. While there are of course bad-faith actors out there who are intentionally flooding our social media feeds and public discourse with lies and false information, the vast majority of us only want to share accurate news and information with our friends and loved ones. The problem is, most of us are not nearly as good at discerning fact from fiction as we think we are. I’d bet anything that nearly everyone reading this considers themselves above-average when it comes to news literacy. Unfortunately, that isn’t — and can’t be — true.
So how can we do better? Here are some tips and some resources from the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University, a group I’m proud to support, and The News Literacy Project, another great non-profit organization:
The most important thing to understand when evaluating a news story is the source itself. Even if the piece is being shared by a person you trust — a friend, a neighbor, a colleague — that doesn’t make the news itself accurate. Is the information evidence-based or an opinion? Is it coming from experts, or people with a specific political agenda? Has the information been vetted by a reliable news source that upholds journalistic standards? Is the same information being reported independently by other trustworthy news sources? Based on the answers to these questions, you may want to think twice before sharing that news story yourself.
Bookmark this page from the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University. In addition to free online courses and other news literacy resources, it includes bookmarks to trusted and reliable independent fact checking websites.
Take this short quiz from The News Literacy Project to see just how sharp your news judgment skills are. You may surprise yourself, and just taking the quiz will help make you think about how you consume news and information.
Above all else — SLOW DOWN! There’s a reason every post of mine on this topic features an image along these lines. The best thing we can all do to slow the spread of misinformation is to take the time to ensure what we’re sharing is accurate. If that means pausing for a few minutes before clicking that share or retweet button, so be it. You’re better off not sharing anything at all or being late to the party than sharing dangerous misinformation.
Good luck out there!