People who are either too trusting or too mistrustful are more likely to believe conspiracy theories and ascribe to vaccine hesitancy, finds a new study by UCL researchers.
The research, published in PLOS Global Public Health, also found that people who are highly credulous are less capable of recognising fake news.
To examine the role of epistemic trust - a term used to describe how much we trust the information we get from others - the team conducted two studies to determine people's ability to tell fake news from real news and their tendency to believe in conspiracies.
The studies involved over 1,200 adults in the UK and examined two types of trust issues: mistrust (avoiding or rejecting information) and credulity (believing information too easily without questioning it).
Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire with 15 questions rated on a scale of "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree" to measure how much they trusted, mistrusted or easily believed information.
Other questionnaires then assessed how much participants believed in general conspiracy theories, COVID-19 conspiracy theories, and how well participants thought analytically versus intuitively.
Participants also rated the accuracy of 20 news headlines and indicated if they would share them on social media, to reflect their ability to distinguish real from fake news.
The researchers found that people who believe things too easily are worse at telling fake news from real news. They are also more likely to believe fake news about COVID-19.
Meanwhile, both mistrust and credulity were linked to believing in conspiracies (both in general and relating to COVID-19) and being hesitant about vaccines.
The researchers believe their findings are particularly important for understanding how people process information in a digital age, where fake news spreads quickly and trust in information sources is declining.
Study author, Professor Peter Fonagy (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences), said: "The study sought to explore social-cognitive processes associated with two of the most urgent issues of global public health in the contemporary digital era: the alarming spread of fake news and the breakdown of collective trust in sources of information.
"Our research seeks to explore possible psychological mechanisms at work in shaping individuals' responses to public information and how this related to personal history."
Findings from the studies also showed that people who experienced adversity in childhood are more likely to end up not trusting information they are told but also believing things too quickly, resulting in them having a harder time in telling fake news from real news.
The impact of these trust issues was small but clearly not due to chance, say the authors.
The research was supported by a grant from the British Academy as part of the BA/Leverhulme Small Research Grants.
