Interestingness-If-True

What it is

A story can be interesting because of what it says, or interesting on the condition that it is real. The second kind is the one the authors measured. A claim that would be remarkable if it held can earn attention and a share before anyone has settled whether it does.

The measure is separate from accuracy and from general interest. In the experiments, participants viewed ten news stories in random order, five true and five fake. For each one they rated how accurate it seemed, how interesting it would be if it were true, and how willing they were to share it. The authors found that interestingness-if-true is a factor of its own, distinct from general interestingness.

The idea fits a wider point about sharing. A person who passes on a story is not necessarily asserting that it is true. One reading is that a sender can hold the interest and the doubt at once.

In effect

Participants rated fake stories as less accurate than true ones in all three experiments, and they were more willing to share true stories and stories they saw as more accurate. Accuracy therefore mattered to sharing. Yet fake stories still scored high on interestingness-if-true, and the authors argue that this helps explain why willingness to share fake stories was not much lower than willingness to share true ones.

The result sits beside the other layers in the research on sharing. Accuracy inattention describes attention that is on something other than truth when the choice arrives. Habitual sharing describes responses that have become automatic. Interestingness-if-true describes a property of the story itself, one that gives a reason to pass it on even for a person who doubts it.

What it does not say

The finding does not say that people share fake stories because they believe them, and it does not say that accuracy is irrelevant. Accuracy still raised willingness to share. It reports that interestingness-if-true adds something that accuracy ratings leave out.

The measure comes from experiments in which participants rated a fixed set of ten stories. It shows that the factor exists and that fake stories can score highly on it. It does not give a rate at which interesting-if-true stories are shared outside the experiments.

Who developed it

Sacha Altay is the first author, with Emma de Araujo and Hugo Mercier. The paper's argument is that valuing a claim for what it would mean if true helps explain the sharing of true and false news alike.

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