Scientific test will reveal how vulnerable you are to fake news

A new study will determine how vulnerable you are to fake news.

Through an online test, users have to rate 20 headlines as real or fake and see how many the get right.

Ten of the headlines are real, while the other 10 were generated by artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT, before being vetted and selected by a panel of experts.

When refining and selecting the fake questions, the team looked for common features of misinformation, such as looking at people's political biases, and tinges of conspiracy theories.

The real headlines were selected from the Media Bias Fact Check database, from reputable news sources.

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The team, conducting the research on 1,516 US adults, found that the average American got 13 out of 20 headlines correct meaning that on average US adults fail to classify one-third of real or fake headlines into their correct category.

The headline people got correct the most was "Republicans Divided in Views of Trump’s Conduct, Democrats Are Broadly Critical", with 80 percent of participants rating it as real. Younger participants scored lower on the misinformation test, getting on average 12 out of 20 to older adults' 15.

If you fancy seeing how susceptible to fake news you are, you can take the test yourself by clicking the link.

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