** This suggests another psychological mechanism contributing to partisan polarization**

📊Key findings:

- Across partisan lines, individuals prioritize expert-directed verification over audience-mediated approaches.

- However, Republicans are more reliant on audience-mediated verification than Democrats, leading to a weaker preference for expert-direction overall.

Expert-direction: relying on traditional media or pre-validated sources.
Audience-mediation: seeking validation through peers or networked connections.

This matters because the ways people verify information may shape the "facts" they ultimately accept.

Our study identifies two key dimensions of information verification: