The Psychological and Cognitive Impact of Fake News on Individual Perception, Thinking, and Decisions: An Empirical Case Study towards GenZ Perspective

Abstract

The world has witnessed significant change in population, social and technological adoption behavior, lifestyle and impulsive decision nature. Though, their changing extent over diverse demographics can’t be ruled out. India, being a nation with dominating young population, especially falling under GenZ category has been undergoing significant changes including socio-technological adoption behavior. Yet, the diversity across intrinsic social-fabrics, fragmented political interests and respective inclination(s) has made it challenging to generalize equi-behavioral pattern. Under aforesaid diversities, social media which has emerged as a widespread source of connection and news sharing, has been causing both awareness as well as fake news propagation. There exists a large number of ill-intended users or accounts on social media created to propagate fake or manipulated news to meet one’s vested interests. Sometime, such fake news cause significant socio-political unrest, social biasing and even violences. Additionally, such fake news can have the impact on user’s perception, thinking and mental well-being that consequently can impact decision abilities. Fake news can manipulate one’s impulsive decisions as well as behavioral aspects. Despite such critical impacts, there exists no effective study in India, which could assess whether fake news can impact perception, thinking and decision making of GenZ social media users, whose impulsive decisions are often debated across socio-professional horizon. Considering it as motivation, this study makes use of mixed research paradigm including qualitative as well as quantitative methods to assess the psychological and cognitive impact of fake news on (GenZ) user’s perception, thinking and decisions. The empirical analysis over 450 user’s primary responses scaled over 116 research questionnaires revealed that the rising fake news contents over social media networks have decisive impact on user’s impulsive decisions, primarily the sense of confusion, emotional manipulation, belief distortion, and poor decision confidence. The study revealed that the fake news has been impacting not only media credibility, but also causing threat to the psychological and cognitive abilities of the young generation and their decision-autonomy. An alarming inference reveals that significant fractions of users find it difficult in distinguishing between genuine and fake news sources, particularly when it aligns with their existing beliefs. Moreover, user’s exposed to the frequent fake news are likely to have compromised decision-anonymity, especially towards political stances, health informatics and behaviors, financial decisions, etc. GenZ being more techsavvy yet are more vulnerable to viral misinformation; though, the one with lower media literacy exhibit higher susceptibility towards cognitive manipulation. Exposure to the fake news and hence misinformation fatigue causes behavioral uncertainty, polarized thinking, compromised cognitive decisiveness. The research inferences emphasize the inevitable need for interdisciplinary interventions, encompassing educational reforms, awareness, digital literacy, AI-driven tools and policy models to detect misinformation and suppress its impact on individual’s cognitive, behavioral well-beings.