Selective Reasoning Behind Fake News: The Role of Affective Polarization, Cognitive Ability, and Social Media Use in Fake News Rejection

With the growing threat of fake news, the literature has identified three key factors that are likely to shape fake news rejection: affective, cognitive, and contextual. This study examines how these forces work both independently and interactively to shape the rejection of partisan fake news. Drawing on dual-process theories of cognition, this study synthesizes two competing perspectives: the classical reasoning perspective, which emphasizes mental capacities that facilitate critical thinking, and the motivated reasoning perspective, which emphasizes the role of cognition in reinforcing partisan discourse. Integrating these accounts, this study proposes a selective reasoning framework, in which cognitive ability is associated with greater rejection of cognitively demanding, attitude-challenging fake news, but with reduced rejection of less demanding, attitude-confirming content. The congruence of a falsehood with a prior attitude thus conditions whether cognitive resources are deployed to reject partisan falsehoods or to rationalize them. Using survey data from South Korea, where political fake news is widely circulated and news trust remains notably low, this study finds that this interaction between affective polarization and cognitive ability is most pronounced among moderate social media users. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the psychological and contextual mechanisms behind fake news rejection and offers practical implications for mitigating the impact of fake news in politically polarized societies.