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Media Literacy & Misinformation: Why Do We Believe Misinformation?

Learn how to recognize and prevent misinformation and discover where your news comes from.

Introduction

UCSF Health Science Clinical Professor Joe Pierre's new book, False: How Mistrust, Disinformation, and Motivated Reasoning Make Us Believe Things That Aren't True, examines the psychology of false belief that gives rise to widespread support for conspiracy theories, science denialism and more. This page explores his key strategies for avoiding misinformation and promoting better information seeking behavior. Dr. Pierre recently participated in an interview for the UCSF online news page. 
 

Mistrust, Misinformation & Motivated Reasoning

Graphic - American's Trust in Mass Media has declined by almost 50% since 1972 & over 25% do not believe mass media at all

                  Graphic courtesy Gallup: "Five Key Insights into Americans' View of the News Media"

  • Mistrust: People who embrace false beliefs often do so because they distrust authoritative sources of information. And people disagree on facts because overall, we trust different information sources. If we mistrust authoritative sources of information, we become susceptible to various forms of misinformation.
  • Misinformation: Unreliable sources of information are now situated right beside reliable ones in the media that we consume, which has often made it difficult -- sometimes even impossible -- for some of us to tell the difference.
  • Motivated Reasoning: What predicts whether you believe misinformation or not? A lot of that has to do with our social identities and the groups to which we subscribe. Example: prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, confidence in vaccines wasn’t that different across political parties. These days, we have differing beliefs based on our affiliation with political or other ideological groups.


Source:
Pierre, J. (2025) Why smart people fall for false information and what to do about it. University of California San Francisco. 

What Do We Do About it?

 

 

The path to avoiding false beliefs and moving closer to the truth, both as individuals and as a society, involves three strategies:

  • Intellectual Humility: Acknowledge that we could be wrong.
  • Cognitive Flexibility: Willingness to listen to other perspectives and possibly change our minds.
  • Analytical Thinking: Pause before jumping to conclusions; understand our own vulnerability. This doesn’t mean being particularly smart. It means instead of jumping to conclusions, we pause and ask, “Is this news headline right?” Maybe it’s wrong. Perhaps I should, for instance, read the article before retweeting. It’s really about understanding our own vulnerability to false belief before we can then try to engage with other people.

Source:
Pierre, J. (2025) Why smart people fall for false information and what to do about it. University of California San Francisco.