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An online world of bias. The mediating role of cognitive biases on extremist attitudes

  • Brigitte Naderer EMAIL logo , Diana Rieger and Ulrike Schwertberger
From the journal Communications

Abstract

Extremists often aim to paint a biased picture of the world. Radical narratives, for instance, in forms of internet memes or posts, could thus potentially trigger cognitive biases in their users. These cognitive biases, in turn, might shape the users’ formation of extremist attitudes. To test this association, an online experiment (N=392) was conducted with three types of right-wing radical narratives (elite-critique, ingroup-outgroup, violence) in contrast to two control conditions (nonpolitical and neutral political control condition). We then measured the impact of these narratives on the activation of three cognitive biases of relevance in the formation of extremist attitudes: the ingroup-outgroup bias, the negativity bias, and the just-world hypothesis. The results indicate that violence narratives seem to be particularly harmful as they heighten participants’ negativity bias and increase just-world views. Just-world views in turn show a positive relationship to extremist attitudes, which highlights the need of regulating violence invocations on social media.

Acknowledgment

This research was supported by the European Union’s Internal Security Fund (ISFP-2018-AG-CT-CSEP). Grant number: 867186

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Published Online: 2023-01-14
Published in Print: 2024-03-01

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