scholarly journals The Alternative Beliefs Project Survey 1 Report - Conspiracy Mentality and Science

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asheley R. Landrum ◽  
Alex Olshansky
Keyword(s):  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Online Marketing ◽  
Fake News ◽  
World Views ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Science News ◽  
News Headlines

Here, we examined the role of conspiracy mentality and motivated reasoning in the endorsement of fake news and rejection of science in two samples: one recruited from an online marketing panel (N=513). Although conspiracy mentality may not always predict rejection of science, we find it is strongly linked to believing that fake science news headlines are true. Moreover, we show that not all conspiracies are believed by those with high conspiracy mentality. Instead, people will believe conspiracies and fake news when the explanations align with their world views.

scholarly journals Beyond “fake news”: The role of analytic thinking in the detection of inaccuracy and partisan bias in news headlines

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M Ross ◽  
David Gertler Rand ◽  
Gordon Pennycook
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Analytic Thinking ◽  
Total N ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
News Content ◽  
Political Bias ◽  
Political Partisanship ◽  
News Headlines

Why is misleading partisan content believed and shared? An influential account posits that political partisanship pervasively biases reasoning, such that engaging in analytic thinking exacerbates motivated reasoning and, in turn, the acceptance of hyperpartisan content. Alternatively, it may be that susceptibility to hyperpartisan misinformation is explained by a lack of reasoning. Across two studies using different subject pools (total N = 1977), we had participants assess true, false, and hyperpartisan headlines taken from social media. We found no evidence that analytic thinking was associated with increased polarization for either judgments about the accuracy of the headlines or willingness to share the news content on social media. Instead, analytic thinking was broadly associated with an increased capacity to discern between true headlines and either false or hyperpartisan headlines. These results suggest that reasoning typically helps people differentiate between low and high quality news content, rather than facilitating political bias.

scholarly journals The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (11) ◽  
pp. 4944-4957 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
Adam Bear ◽  
Evan T. Collins ◽  
David G. Rand
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Potential Consequence ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Truth Effect ◽  
News Headlines ◽  
Potential Challenge ◽  
Modest Reduction

What can be done to combat political misinformation? One prominent intervention involves attaching warnings to headlines of news stories that have been disputed by third-party fact-checkers. Here we demonstrate a hitherto unappreciated potential consequence of such a warning: an implied truth effect, whereby false headlines that fail to get tagged are considered validated and thus are seen as more accurate. With a formal model, we demonstrate that Bayesian belief updating can lead to such an implied truth effect. In Study 1 (n = 5,271 MTurkers), we find that although warnings do lead to a modest reduction in perceived accuracy of false headlines relative to a control condition (particularly for politically concordant headlines), we also observed the hypothesized implied truth effect: the presence of warnings caused untagged headlines to be seen as more accurate than in the control. In Study 2 (n = 1,568 MTurkers), we find the same effects in the context of decisions about which headlines to consider sharing on social media. We also find that attaching verifications to some true headlines—which removes the ambiguity about whether untagged headlines have not been checked or have been verified—eliminates, and in fact slightly reverses, the implied truth effect. Together these results contest theories of motivated reasoning while identifying a potential challenge for the policy of using warning tags to fight misinformation—a challenge that is particularly concerning given that it is much easier to produce misinformation than it is to debunk it. This paper was accepted by Elke Weber, judgment and decision making.

scholarly journals “Fake News” or Real Science? Critical Thinking to Assess Information on COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blanca Puig ◽  
Paloma Blanco-Anaya ◽  
Jorge J. Pérez-Maceira
Keyword(s):  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Scientific Information ◽  
World Health ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Real Science ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
News Headlines

Few people question the important role of critical thinking in students becoming active citizens; however, the way science is taught in schools continues to be more oriented toward “what to think” rather than “how to think.” Researchers understand critical thinking as a tool and a higher-order thinking skill necessary for being an active citizen when dealing with socio-scientific information and making decisions that affect human life, which the pandemic of COVID-19 provides many opportunities for. The outbreak of COVID-19 has been accompanied by what the World Health Organization (WHO) has described as a “massive infodemic.” Fake news covering all aspects of the pandemic spread rapidly through social media, creating confusion and disinformation. This paper reports on an empirical study carried out during the lockdown in Spain (March–May 2020) with a group of secondary students (N = 20) engaged in diverse online activities that required them to practice critical thinking and argumentation for dealing with coronavirus information and disinformation. The main goal is to examine students’ competence at engaging in argumentation as critical assessment in this context. Discourse analysis allows for the exploration of the arguments and criteria applied by students to assess COVID-19 news headlines. The results show that participants were capable of identifying true and false headlines and assessing the credibility of headlines by appealing to different criteria, although most arguments were coded as needing only a basic epistemic level of assessment, and only a few appealed to the criterion of scientific procedure when assessing the headlines.

Lattice Thermal Conductivity Modelling of a Diatomic Nanoscale Material

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 602-609
Author(s):  
Adil H. Awad
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Conductivity ◽  
Lattice Thermal Conductivity ◽  
Phonon Scattering ◽  
Correction Term ◽  
Nanoscale Material ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Conductivity Modelling ◽  
Callaway Model

Introduction: A new approach for expressing the lattice thermal conductivity of diatomic nanoscale materials is developed. Methods: The lattice thermal conductivity of two samples of GaAs nanobeam at 4-100K is calculated on the basis of monatomic dispersion relation. Phonons are scattered by nanobeam boundaries, point defects and other phonons via normal and Umklapp processes. Methods: A comparative study of the results of the present analysis and those obtained using Callaway formula is performed. We clearly demonstrate the importance of the utilised scattering mechanisms in lattice thermal conductivity by addressing the separate role of the phonon scattering relaxation rate. The formulas derived from the correction term are also presented, and their difference from Callaway model is evident. Furthermore their percentage contribution is sufficiently small to be neglected in calculating lattice thermal conductivity. Conclusion: Our model is successfully used to correlate the predicted lattice thermal conductivity with that of the experimental observation.

Talking, Reading, and Writing on Smartphones

2020 ◽  
pp. 407-422
Author(s):  
Naomi S. Baron
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Easy Access ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Internet Protocols ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Reading Material ◽  
Voice Calls ◽  
News Headlines ◽  
Communication Preference

Mobile phones have increasingly been transformed from speaking technologies to devices for reading and writing. Cost helped drive this shift since written short messages were historically less expensive than voice calls. A second factor was communication preference for texting over talking, especially among younger users. With ready Internet access on smartphones, reading habits began shifting as well. Social networking messages, along with other short texts such as weather reports or news headlines, made for obvious reading material, as did the plethora of longer written documents available online. The e-book revolution enabled readers to retrieve entire books on their phones. Mobile phones are also writing platforms. Developments in hardware and software dramatically simplified the input process. Instead of multi-taps, users now rely on virtual keyboards for easy access not only to alphanumeric characters and punctuation marks but also to sophisticated predictive texting and autocorrection. Interestingly, while technically we are writing when inputting text on smartphones, many users do not perceive such input as real “writing”—a term they reserve for writing by hand or with a computer. Additional writing issues include norms regarding so-called textisms, along with the role of culture in shaping attitudes regarding linguistic correctness. Many organizations are discontinuing voicemail systems in favor of written messaging. At the same time, voice over Internet protocols continue to grow, and small voice-activated social robots designed for home use are proliferating. The chapter closes by asking what the spoken–written balance on smartphones might look like in the future.

scholarly journals Perceived truth of statements and simulated social media postings: an experimental investigation of source credibility, repeated exposure, and presentation format

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Nadarevic ◽  
Rolf Reber ◽  
Anne Josephine Helmecke ◽  
Dilara Köse
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Repeated Exposure ◽  
Presentation Format ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Additive Effects ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Source Information ◽  
Internet Age

Abstract To better understand the spread of fake news in the Internet age, it is important to uncover the variables that influence the perceived truth of information. Although previous research identified several reliable predictors of truth judgments—such as source credibility, repeated information exposure, and presentation format—little is known about their simultaneous effects. In a series of four experiments, we investigated how the abovementioned factors jointly affect the perceived truth of statements (Experiments 1 and 2) and simulated social media postings (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 1 explored the role of source credibility (high vs. low vs. no source information) and presentation format (with vs. without a picture). In Experiments 2 and 3, we additionally manipulated repeated exposure (yes vs. no). Finally, Experiment 4 examined the role of source credibility (high vs. low) and type of repetition (congruent vs. incongruent vs. no repetition) in further detail. In sum, we found no effect of presentation format on truth judgments, but strong, additive effects of source credibility and repetition. Truth judgments were higher for information presented by credible sources than non-credible sources and information without sources. Moreover, congruent (i.e., verbatim) repetition increased perceived truth whereas semantically incongruent repetition decreased perceived truth, irrespectively of the source. Our findings show that people do not rely on a single judgment cue when evaluating a statement’s truth but take source credibility and their meta-cognitive feelings into account.

scholarly journals How Can Psychological Science Help Counter the Spread of Fake News?

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sander van der Linden ◽  
Jon Roozenbeek ◽  
Rakoen Maertens ◽  
Melisa Basol ◽  
Ondřej Kácha ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Intervention Effectiveness ◽  
Motivated Cognition ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
The Individual

Abstract In recent years, interest in the psychology of fake news has rapidly increased. We outline the various interventions within psychological science aimed at countering the spread of fake news and misinformation online, focusing primarily on corrective (debunking) and pre-emptive (prebunking) approaches. We also offer a research agenda of open questions within the field of psychological science that relate to how and why fake news spreads and how best to counter it: the longevity of intervention effectiveness; the role of sources and source credibility; whether the sharing of fake news is best explained by the motivated cognition or the inattention accounts; and the complexities of developing psychometrically validated instruments to measure how interventions affect susceptibility to fake news at the individual level.

The Role of Individual and Dyadic Planning in Couples’ Daily Goal Pursuits

2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722199763
Author(s):  
Ophir Katzenelenbogen ◽  
Nina Knoll ◽  
Gertraud Stadler ◽  
Eran Bar-Kalifa
Keyword(s):  
Daily Basis ◽  
Goal Achievement ◽  
Daily Diaries ◽  
Goal Progress ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Individual Planning ◽  
Goal Pursuits ◽  
Complementary Strategy

Planning promotes progress toward goal achievement in a wide range of domains. To date, planning has mostly been studied as an individual process. In couples, however, the partner is likely to play an important role in planning. This study tested the effects of individual and dyadic planning on goal progress and goal-related actions. Two samples of couples ( N = 76 and N = 87) completed daily diaries over a period of 28 and 21 days. The results indicate that individual and dyadic planning fluctuate on a daily basis and support the idea that dyadic planning is predominantly used as a complementary strategy to individual planning. As expected, individual and dyadic planning were positively associated with higher levels of action control and goal progress. In Sample 2, dyadic planning was only associated with goal progress on days in which individuals felt that they were dependent upon their partners’ behaviors to achieve their goals.

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