Political psychology in the digital (mis)information age: A model of news belief and sharing

Bavel, Jay Joseph Van; Harris, Elizabeth Ann; Pärnamets, Philip; Rathje, Steve; Doell, Kimberly C.; Tucker, Joshua A.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/u5yts

Cited by 18 publications

(23 citation statements)

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“…Here we showed that dyads will accept false feedback about their past choices and that doing so affects their later choices. This result extends the phenomenon of choice-induced preference change to groups, and reminds us that in this hyper-connected social media age to be ever vigilant of the accuracy of the group feedback that we receive (Allington, Duffy, Wessely, Dhavan, & Rubin, 2020;Van Bavel et al, 2020). quality of multiattribute judgments.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 70%

Choice blindness and choice-induced preference change in groups

Pärnamets¹,

J²,

Raafat³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Contrary to common belief, our preferences do not only shape our decisions but are also shaped by what decisions we make. This effect, known as choice-induced preference change, has been extensively studied in individuals. Here we document choice-induced preference change in groups. We do so by using the choice-blindness paradigm, a method by which participants are given false feedback about their past choices. Participants are given a second round of choices following the choice blindness manipulation´measuring preference change resulting from accepting the manipulation. In Experiment 1 (N=83), we introduce a roommate selection task used in this paper and use it to replicate choice-induced preference change using choice-blindness in individuals. In Experiment 2 (N=160), dyad members made mutual choices in the roommate selection task and then receive either veridical or false feedback about what choice they made. The majority of the false feedback trials were accepted by the dyads as their own choices, thereby demonstrating choice blindness in dyads for the first time. Dyads exhibited choice-induced preference change and were more likely to choose the originally rejected option on trials where they accepted the manipulation compared to control trials. In Experiment 3 (N=80), we show that the preference effect induced by the choice blindness manipulation at the group level does not generalize back to follow up choices made by individual participants when removed from the group. In all studies, response time analyses further support our conclusions. Choice-induced preference change exists for both individuals and groups, but the level at which the choice was made constrains the influence of that choice on later preferences.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 70%

Choice blindness and choice-induced preference change in groups

Pärnamets¹,

J²,

Raafat³

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…Social media sharing often reflects a desire to maintain a positive self-presentation (17,29). This can lead to different outcomes depending on the context, social norms, and design features of one's online network (59), since strategies to maintain a positive self-image may differ by context (26,60). While many studies find a negativity bias in online sharing (19,52), there are some contexts where positive content is shared more often.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Out-group animosity drives engagement on social media

Rathje

Bavel

Linden

2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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301

188

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There has been growing concern about the role social media plays in political polarization. We investigated whether out-group animosity was particularly successful at generating engagement on two of the largest social media platforms: Facebook and Twitter. Analyzing posts from news media accounts and US congressional members (n = 2,730,215), we found that posts about the political out-group were shared or retweeted about twice as often as posts about the in-group. Each individual term referring to the political out-group increased the odds of a social media post being shared by 67%. Out-group language consistently emerged as the strongest predictor of shares and retweets: the average effect size of out-group language was about 4.8 times as strong as that of negative affect language and about 6.7 times as strong as that of moral-emotional language—both established predictors of social media engagement. Language about the out-group was a very strong predictor of “angry” reactions (the most popular reactions across all datasets), and language about the in-group was a strong predictor of “love” reactions, reflecting in-group favoritism and out-group derogation. This out-group effect was not moderated by political orientation or social media platform, but stronger effects were found among political leaders than among news media accounts. In sum, out-group language is the strongest predictor of social media engagement across all relevant predictors measured, suggesting that social media may be creating perverse incentives for content expressing out-group animosity.

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“…While political views have been linked to receptivity to bullshit and engagement with false news (findings we replicate in our data, see Footnote 11), this does not seem to play any role in explaining our findings regarding deprivation curiosity. While deprivation curiosity explains only a small part of the variance in people's susceptibility to disinformation, and other factors likely play a bigger role (e.g., Van Bavel, Harris, Pärnamets, Rathje, Doell, & Tucker, 2021), it is remarkable that curiosity, which is usually portrayed as a virtue, can have this negative aspect to it.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inquisitive but Not Discerning: Deprivation Curiosity is Associated with Excessive Openness to Inaccurate Information

Cm¹,

Groß²,

Schooler³

2021

Preprint

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Epistemic curiosity (the desire for knowledge) is considered a catalyst for learning and innovation. The current research reveals another, darker side of curiosity, which emerges when we examine the independent contributions of the two facets that make up epistemic curiosity—interest and deprivation curiosity. In four preregistered studies (collective N = 2020), we show that interest curiosity, a facet of curiosity motivated by the joy of exploration, is associated with traits and abilities that benefit learning. These include general knowledge (Studies 1-4), intellectual humility (Studies 1-4), responsiveness to new information (Studies 1, 3 & 4), and accuracy in distinguishing real and made-up concepts (Studies 1-4). In contrast, deprivation curiosity, which is motivated by the desire to reduce uncertainty, is associated with mistakes and confusion. Individuals high in deprivation curiosity claim familiarity with novel information (Studies 1 & 3) and made-up concepts (Studies 1-4). They find meaning in pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific “bullshit” (Studies 3 & 4) and are prone to believing and sharing disinformation or “fake news” (Study 4). To make matters worse, they lack intellectually humility (Studies 1-4), and are thus unlikely to recognize their mistakes. We find that these difficulties are not explained by narcissistic self-enhancement (Study 2) or lack of analytic thinking (Study 4), and only partially accounted for by need for closure (Study 3). We theorize that deprivation curiosity is characterized by an indiscriminate openness to information.

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Political psychology in the digital (mis)information age: A model of news belief and sharing

Cited by 18 publications

References 0 publications

Choice blindness and choice-induced preference change in groups

Choice blindness and choice-induced preference change in groups

Out-group animosity drives engagement on social media

Inquisitive but Not Discerning: Deprivation Curiosity is Associated with Excessive Openness to Inaccurate Information

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