A phenomenon in which individuals with opposing viewpoints both perceive the same news media as being biased against their position.

The hostile media phenomenon

Conservatives have been found to indicate more distrust of the media than liberals.

Asymmetries in perception of media bias

While there is an association between need for structure and belief that media was intentionally deceitful among both republican and democratic participants, this link was reliably stronger in the case of Republican participants.

Asymmetries in link between need for structure and perception of deceit in media

When participants read an essay about the misinformation spread by the political party opposite their own affiliation, there was a positive association between need for structure and their attributions of media as intentionally deceitful. 

Need for structure and perception of intentional deceit in media in cases of ideological consistency

Although humans ordinarily prioritize self-enhancing information, individuals also often perceive news media as largely opposing their personal beliefs.

Pepperdine University

- Availability bias
- Negativity bias
- Base rate neglect
- Confirmation bias
- Status quo bias
- Framing effect
- Belief bias
- Hindsight bias
- Propaganda effect
- Bias blind spot
- Egocentric bias
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- Motivated reasoning
- Group-centric bias
- Third person effect
- Cross-group bias
- Ingroup bias
- Memory bias
- Prior Belief bias
- Bias Blind spots


List of biases (and behavioral effects)

Individuals will often attribute inaccurate news reports to either an unintentional error or an intentional attempt to spread misinformation.

Attributions for fake news

Axt, J. R., Landau, M. J., & Kay, A. C. (2020). Fake news attributions as a source of nonspecific structure. In R. Greifeneder, M. Jaffé, E. J. Newman, & N. Schwarz (Eds.), The psychology of fake news: Accepting, sharing, and correcting misinformation (pp. 220–234). London: Routledge. 

Fake news attributions as a source of nonspecific structure

The mind tends to ignore base rates (even if informed) and focuses on the most recently discovered evidence. Generally underweighted or neglected when specific casee information is available

base rate neglect (fallacy)

People have a tendency to do nothing when facing a decision (exemplified by opt-in and opt-out procedures).

Status quo bias

People's decisions are affected by the way that the choices are framed (presented).

Framing effect

People have a tendency to think a syllogism is valid if it looks like it is true.

Belief Bias

Hindsight bias, also known as the 'knew-it-all-along' phenomenon, is the tendency to perceive past events as having been more predictable than they actually were. After an event's outcome is known, individuals often mistakenly believe they would have accurately predicted it beforehand.

Hindsight Bias

When people have heard something before they are more likely to assume it is true, even if the first time they were introduced to it they were told it wasn't true.

Propaganda effect

Humans have a bias to think they are less biased than others. Arises from the implicit operation of our beliefs which help us justify our actions. This can exacerbate other forms of bias because one is unaware of their own bias or they minimize their bias in comparison to others.

Bias Blind Spot

Humans have a tendency to focus on the negative. For example, we focus more on potential threats than benefits.

Negativity bias

Humans tend to overestimate the influence of personality (dispositional) compared to situational factors when making explanations for why people do what they do. 

The Fundamental Attribution Error

A bias in which new information that supports what we want to believe is readily accepted and information that supports what we do not want to believe is scrutinized in an effort to reduce cognitive dissonance. Motivated reasoning is very similar to confirmation bias

Motivated Reasoning

A hypothesis that people believe mass media has a larger influence on others than on themselves

Third Person Effect

When members of a particular population or community (i.e., group) favor the group of which they are a member for a particular measure.

Group-Centric Bias

When group members have negative views towards nonmembers of their group, not limited to nonmembers who are related to the group in an obvious way. 

Cross-Group Bias

Biases in media perception

A common type of bias that occurs when one does not recall information verbatim but instead recalls their own personal interpretation of the information.

Memory Bias

When a person's prior beliefs or attitudes impact what information they pay attention to and how they interpret new information. This bias often manifests as favoring information that is consistent with one's worldview and beliefs.

Prior Belief Bias

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to selectively focus on cases that validate our pre-existing intuitive beliefs while actively disregarding or forgetting cases that disconfirm them. This mental shortcut leads individuals to reinforce incorrect assumptions by ignoring contradictory evidence.

Confirmation Bias

The availability heuristic is a mental shortcut where individuals make decisions based on information that is most easily recalled, such as a recent experience or a vivid example. This reliance on readily available information can lead to flawed judgments, as the most accessible information is not always the most representative or accurate for making a sound decision.

Availability Heuristic

Humans place themselves at the center of their universe. New information is learned more easily when it relates to the person learning it.

Egocentric Bias

In-group bias is the tendency to prefer one's own group over other groups. This preference stems from the strong sense of belonging and emotional connection individuals feel toward their in-groups.

In-Group Bias

A majority of Americans believe traditional news sources are knowingly publishing incorrect or misleading information.

Attributing fake news to intentional deception

Participants were shown retracted news stories that either supported or contradicted their personal views. The participants were then asked whether they believed that the story was retracted because the story contained false information due to an honest mistake or due to intentional deception.
Both Republicans and Democrats indicated that they believed that the news media was intentionally deceptive.

Those who had a high Personal Need for Structure were more likely to attribute the retraction to intentional deceit, even when the news story supported their own views.

Studying the fake news attribution of retracted news stories

Attributing fake news to unintentional error or intentional deception both allow one to discredit information that opposes their own viewpoint.

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