The effects of emotions, individual attitudes towards vaccination, and social endorsements on perceived fake news credibility and sharing motivations

In recent times, the spread of false or “fake” anti-vaccination news and information on social media has been linked to the global rise of vaccine hesitancy, resulting in increased vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks. As such, the current study employed the Heuristic Systematic Model (HSM) to elucidate the effect of certain cognitive heuristics on the perceived credibility and sharing motivations of fake anti-vaccination news on social media. The study used a 3 (emotion: anger vs. fear vs. neutral) × 3 (attitude: pro-vaccine vs. anti-vaccine vs. neutral) × 2 (social endorsements: low vs. high) between-subjects factorial design (N = 656). Two-way interaction effects were found between emotion and attitude on both perceived credibility of fake news and self-expression motivation to share the news. A three-way interaction effect was also found between emotion, attitude, and social endorsements on status-seeking motivation to share the news. These findings reveal consistent evidence that fear motivates anti-vaccine individuals to believe in and share fake news, while anger motivates people who are neutral towards vaccines to do so. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.