Most Americans wrongly estimate ability to spot fake news

As many as three in four Americans overestimate their ability to spot fake news or false headlines, the CNN reported on Tuesday.

The study carried out by a team led by Ben Lyons, a professor of communications at the University of Utah, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involved 8,200 participants. The volunteers for the study were given headlines presented in the format of how news articles would look if they appeared in a Facebook feed, and asked to rate their ability to distinguish the facticity of those news, said CNN.

"We show that overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioral data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial," the team said.

The worse these participants' ability is, the more likely they are to share fake stories, researchers reported.

About 90 percent of participants told researchers they believed that their ability to recognize fake news was above average.

"If people incorrectly see themselves as highly skilled at identifying false news, they may unwittingly be more likely to consume, believe and share it, especially if it conforms to their worldview," Lyons said in a statement.