The effect of social approval on perceptions following social media message sharing applied to fake news

A field experiment examined social approval in the form of Twitter "Likes"on individuals' perceptions after retweeting a fictitious news story about a politician. The study incorporated research about feedback effects on self-perception online, partisan bias, and negativity principles. Participants read or retweeted a (verifiably false) news story via social media, and researchers appended systematic increments of Likes to the retweets. A baseline hypothesis test found no effect on perceptions due to retweeting versus simply reading a news story. Results supported a predicted three-way interaction effect between positive versus negative news story, political congruence with participants' political party identification, and the reception of 0-22 Likes on perceptions of the politician. More Likes magnified negative perceptions of politicians, from fictitious news, when news stories were negative and focused on politicians from one's opposite political party.