The Power of Emotions in the Era of Fake News

Abstract

This article explores the role of emotions in shaping individuals’ vulnerability to fake news., affecting both the perception and the dissemination of false information, with particular attention paid to young audiences who grow up inside the digital attention economy. The study builds on research from the psychology of misinformation, dual-process cognitive theory, affective persuasion, the illusory truth effect, and recent neuroscientific findings about how the brain processes fabricated content; it also draws from media studies and post-truth theory. Methodologically, we conducted a narrative literature review and conceptual synthesis based on peer-reviewed international studies, meta-analyses, and neuroimaging research published between 2020 and 2025, including Romanian empirical contributions. The findings indicate that emotions act as central drivers of vulnerability to disinformation: they reduce critical reflection, reinforce illusory truth through repetition, help create false memories, and fuel viral redistribution across social networks, with important differences across age groups and levels of media literacy. The analysis offers useful insights for educators, researchers, policy makers, and platform designers who aim to strengthen emotional resilience, media literacy, and critical thinking, particularly among adolescents and young adults. The paper's contribution lies in an integrative psychological and neurocognitive framework that links individual affective mechanisms to the broader socio-digital dynamics of contemporary disinformation.