Who’s in the Crowd Matters: Cognitive Factors and Beliefs Predict Misinformation Assessment Accuracy

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Misinformation runs rampant on social media and has been tied to adverse health behaviors such as vaccine hesitancy. Crowdsourcing can be a means to detect and impede the spread of misinformation online. However, past studies have not deeply examined the individual characteristics— such as cognitive factors and biases— that predict crowdworker accuracy at identifying misinformation. In our study (n = 265), MTurk workers and university students assessed the truthfulness and sentiment of COVID-19 related tweets as well as answered several surveys on personal characteristics. Results support the viability of crowdsourcing for assessing misinformation and content stance (i.e., sentiment) related to ongoing and politically-charged topics like the COVID-19 pandemic, however, alignment with experts depends on who is in the crowd. Specifically, we find that respondents with high Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) scores, conscientiousness, and trust in medical scientists are more aligned with experts while respondents with high Need for Cognitive Closure (NFCC) and those who lean politically conservative are less aligned with experts. We see differences between recruitment platforms as well, as our data shows university students are on average more aligned with experts than MTurk workers, most likely due to overall differences in participant characteristics on each platform. Results offer transparency into how crowd composition affects misinformation and stance assessment and have implications on future crowd recruitment and filtering practices.