# Which linguistic cues make people fall for fake news? A comparison of cognitive and affective processing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.03751 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03751/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 8 of its 94 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Dec 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [The science of fake news](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07903/) (2023)
- [The COVID-19 Social Media Infodemic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05004/) (2020)
- [Russian propaganda on social media during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.04154/) (2022)
- [Moral Emotions Shape the Virality of COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.03590/) (2022)
- [Shifting Polarization and Twitter News Influencers between two U.S. Presidential Elections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.02505/) (2021)
- [Diffusion of Community Fact-Checked Misinformation on Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13673/) (2022)
- [Mechanisms of True and False Rumor Sharing in Social Media: Collective Intelligence or Herd Behavior?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.03020/) (2022)
- [New threats to society from free-speech social media platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01229/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Bridging Thoughts and Words: Graph-Based Intent-Semantic Joint Learning for Fake News Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.01660/) (2025)
- [Persuasive or Neutral? A Field Experiment on Generative AI in Online Travel Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14259/) (2025)
- [Headlines You Won't Forget: Can Pronoun Insertion Increase Memorability?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19189/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Fake news on social media has large, negative implications for society. However, little is known about what linguistic cues make people fall for fake news and, hence, how to design effective countermeasures for social media. In this study, we seek to understand which linguistic cues make people fall for fake news. Linguistic cues (e.g., adverbs, personal pronouns, positive emotion words, negative emotion words) are important characteristics of any text and also affect how people process real vs. fake news. Specifically, we compare the role of linguistic cues across both cognitive processing (related to careful thinking) and affective processing (related to unconscious automatic evaluations). To this end, we performed a within-subject experiment where we collected neurophysiological measurements of 42 subjects while these read a sample of 40 real and fake news articles. During our experiment, we measured cognitive processing through eye fixations, and affective processing in situ through heart rate variability. We find that users engage more in cognitive processing for longer fake news articles, while affective processing is more pronounced for fake news written in analytic words. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work studying the role of linguistic cues in fake news processing. Altogether, our findings have important implications for designing online platforms that encourage users to engage in careful thinking and thus prevent them from falling for fake news.