The Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST): A psychometrically validated measure of news veracity discernment.
Maertens R., Götz FM., Golino HF., Roozenbeek J., Schneider CR., Kyrychenko Y., Kerr JR., Stieger S., McClanahan WP., Drabot K., He J., van der Linden S.
Interest in the psychology of misinformation has exploded in recent years. Despite ample research, to date there is no validated framework to measure misinformation susceptibility. Therefore, we introduce Verification done, a nuanced interpretation schema and assessment tool that simultaneously considers Veracity discernment, and its distinct, measurable abilities (real/fake news detection), and biases (distrust/naïvité-negative/positive judgment bias). We then conduct three studies with seven independent samples (Ntotal = 8504) to show how to develop, validate, and apply the Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST). In Study 1 (N = 409) we use a neural network language model to generate items, and use three psychometric methods-factor analysis, item response theory, and exploratory graph analysis-to create the MIST-20 (20 items; completion time