Online misinformation has become a pervasive and growing social concern. Adolescents may be especially vulnerable because they are still developing regulatory capabilities and place a heightened value on peer approval, including among social networks. Understanding how protective factors could buffer youth against online misleading content is becoming therefore an increasing priority for educators,psychologists, and those supporting adolescents' development. Adopting a person-centered approach, this study aim to: identify groups of adolescents characterized by different configurations of individual dimensions related to self-regulation; examine whether and how these configurations are associated to different profiles in their cognitive, behavioral, and emotional responses in dealing with specifically created manipulated news. Participants were 156 adolescents(17.9%Female;age 13-16 years,M=14.19,SD=0.55). Cluster analysis identified three clearly distinct profiles. C1:reflective adolescents highly activated by the piece of news, with high cognitive reflection and high perceived importance of the news,but low regulatory emotional self-efficacy toward anger and average inhibitory self-efficacy against misinformation sharing; C2:adolescents with regulation difficulties, low cognitive reflection, average perceived importance and regulatory emotional self-efficacy toward anger, and low inhibitory self-efficacy against misinformation sharing; C3:self-efficacious adolescents, with high cognitive reflection, high regulatory emotional self-efficacy toward anger, high inhibitory self-efficacy against misinformation sharing, and low perceived importance of the news content. Regarding responses to the misleading news item, C1showed the highest perceived credibility,empathy, and anger; C2demonstrated high sharing intentions(equal to those inC1)and moderate levels of perceived credibility; C3showed the lowest sharing intentions, perceived credibility, empathy, and anger. These meaningful differences in sharing intentions,credibility judgements,and emotional activation in response to the same news item suggest different adolescents' vulnerability or resistance to online manipulation.
The variety of the non-trivial interplay of such aspects of self-regulation could be useful for designing tailored interventions in preventive and educational programs focusing on reflective and self-regulatory capabilities to mitigate the spread and impact of online misinformation among youth.