A goldilocks critique of the hot cognition perspective on climate change skepticism

Hennes, Erin P.; Kim, Tae-Ik; Remache, Leslie J

doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.03.009

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…When readers lack confidence in newly presented information, they may be more likely to demonstrate skepticism, decreasing the likelihood that information will influence subsequent judgments and decisions. This has crucial implications for information consumption, as the strength of people's prior attitudes and beliefs can affect the believability of newly reported ideas (Moravec, Minas, & Dennis, 2018), as well as their motivation to scrutinize and evaluate the validity of those ideas (Hennes, Kim, & Remache, 2020;Taber & Lodge, 2006). Confidence is therefore relevant for considering responses to inaccurate information, and also for accounts of how people judge and act on truth (Brashier & Marsh, 2020;Fazio et al, 2015;Kendeou & O'Brien, 2014).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can confidence help account for and redress the effects of reading inaccurate information?

et al. 2020

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Being exposed to inaccurate information in fiction can negatively influence post-reading judgments and decisions. For example, people make more errors judging the validity of statements after reading stories containing related inaccurate as compared to related accurate assertions. While these effects have been demonstrated in a variety of studies, people's confidence in their postreading judgments has received little attention. The current experiments examined whether exposure to accurate and inaccurate information embedded in fiction influences readers' confidence in judging the validity of related claims. Participants read an extended story containing accurate and inaccurate assertions about the world (Experiment 1a) or a control story omitting those assertions (Experiment 1b). Afterwards they judged the validity of single statements related to the critical assertions and provided confidence ratings for each judgment. While participants made more judgment errors after having read inaccurate assertions than after having read accurate assertions or stories without assertions, they were overall less confident in their incorrect as compared to correct judgments. Given the observed relationship between confidence and judgment accuracy, in Experiments 2 and 3 we tested whether allowing and instructing participants to withhold responses might reduce judgment errors. This withholding option reduced participants' incorrect and correct judgments, failing to specifically eliminate the negative consequences of exposure to inaccurate assertions. These findings are discussed with respect to accounts documenting the influence of inaccurate information, and highlight confidence as a relevant but understudied factor in previous empirical demonstrations of such effects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can confidence help account for and redress the effects of reading inaccurate information?

et al. 2020

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“…These practices might, for example, underlie mindsets that influence epistemic processes and products (Mayo, 2019). They may also be useful for further evaluating the circumstances under which people scrutinize information or adopt shallow processing approaches that omit careful reasoning (e.g., Hennes, Kim, & Remache, 2020;Pennycook & Rand, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Look it up: Online search reduces the problematic effects of exposures to inaccuracies

Donovan

Rapp

2020

Mem Cogn

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People often reproduce information they read, which is beneficial when that information is accurate. Unfortunately, people are also often exposed to inaccurate information, with subsequent reproductions allowing for problematic decisions and behaviors. One empirically validated consequence of exposures to inaccuracies is that after reading falsehoods, participants are more likely to make errors answering related questions than if they previously read accurate statements, particularly for unfamiliar information. Interventions designed to attenuate these reproductions are often ineffective, at least as studied in tasks that restrict participants to generating answers based on text content and relevant prior knowledge. In the real world, however, people have access to outside resources to evaluate information. In three experiments, we tested whether affording the option to search for relevant online information following exposure to inaccurate statements would reduce reproductions of those inaccuracies on a post-reading task. Participants given the opportunity to search for information were less likely to reproduce inaccurate information and more likely to produce correct responses, in comparison to the performance of participants who were not allowed to search. We also tested whether warnings about potentially inaccurate information would encourage searches and inform responses. While warnings increased searching, additional reductions in inaccurate reproductions were not observed. Given the contingencies of many lab tasks, reproductions of inaccurate information might be overestimated. Resources available in the real world can offer useful supports for reducing the influence of and uncertainty associated with inaccurate exposures, consistent with contemporary accounts of memory and comprehension.

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“…Other research, however, finds little evidence of directional motivated reasoning in climate change communication, suggesting that perhaps people may rely on accuracy goals when interpreting climate change information (Druckman & McGrath, 2019;van der Linden, Maibach, et al, 2019). Traditional research on motivated reasoning may be "too hot", assuming more directional, political motivated reasoning than the evidence suggests (Hennes et al, 2020).…”

Section: Political Affiliationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influencing climate change attitudes in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Rode

Dent

Benedict

et al. 2021

Journal of Environmental Psychology

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A goldilocks critique of the hot cognition perspective on climate change skepticism

Cited by 20 publications

References 44 publications

Can confidence help account for and redress the effects of reading inaccurate information?

Can confidence help account for and redress the effects of reading inaccurate information?

Look it up: Online search reduces the problematic effects of exposures to inaccuracies

Influencing climate change attitudes in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis

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