The World Economic Forum in its latest report elects disinformation as the most significant short-term global risk to tackle in modern society. This report more specifically mentions that misinformation is capable of disrupting elections and exacerbating societal polarization. Since photojournalistic images are treated as a proof, as a self-contained piece of evidence that an event has happened (Garry et al., 2007), finding out which factors influence the perception of the authenticity of a picture is crucial. We collected authenticity perception, political views, and emotional response to image through 2 different online studies on a representative sample of the polish population. We then analyzed our data through statistical methods (Mixed Models) as well as machine learning methods, namely K-Fold trained Random Forest Classifier. Our analyzes revealed that political orientation, on a left-wing or right-wing type of scale, seemed to be predictive both of authenticity perception, and in the confidence of raters in this choice. They also revealed that some emotions might be predictive of realness or fakeness perception, but that this would most likely be a co-factor of political orientation, as this orientation might also predict which emotions would be perceived when looking at the photographs. In an era where fake news, enhanced by doctored photographs, spread misinformation and affects all kind of communication, including the political and science worlds, these results show that there are possibilities to predict authenticity perception from individual characteristics, potentially helping tackle one of the biggest upcoming societal challenges, according to different previsions.