The Psychology of Fake News

Pennycook, Gordon; Rand, David G.

doi:10.31234/osf.io/ar96c

Cited by 34 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 101 publications

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“…Our third experiment considers how social information shapes belief formation in a context where social values or preferences are irrelevant [31]. In such settings, social information can help individuals acquire useful knowledge [32] and make accurate decisions [33,34], but may also misinform [35], promote beliefs in conspiracy theories [36] or fuel group polarization [37].…”

Section: Prosocialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social influence in adolescence as a double-edged sword

Molleman¹,

Ciranka²,

Bos³

2021

Preprint

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Social learning is fundamental to human development, helping individuals adapt to new conditions and cooperate in groups. During the formative years of adolescence, the social environment shapes people’s socio-cognitive skills needed in adulthood. Yet, peer influence during this pivotal developmental stage is generally associated with risky and unruly conduct, with eminent negative long-term effects on adolescents’ educational, economic and health outcomes. Here we show, in contrast to this traditional view, that the impact of peers on adolescents’ behaviour can also be markedly positive. Exposure to disobedient peers provoked rule breaking, and selfish peers reduced prosocial behaviour, particularly in early adolescence. However, compliant peers also promoted rule-following and fair peers increased prosociality. A belief formation task further revealed that early adolescents tend to assimilate social information, while older adolescents prioritise personal views. Our results suggest that these developmental patterns reflect a decline in an underlying domain-general factor of social sensitivity during adolescence, and highlight early adolescence as a key window for peer-based interventions to improve developmental trajectories.

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Section: Prosocialitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Social influence in adolescence as a double-edged sword

Molleman¹,

Ciranka²,

Bos³

2021

Preprint

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“…Over and above just being noisy (and indeed nosey), such social sources might have their own biases and interests of which successful agents need to be aware when evaluating whether they should invest in hearing their opinion and using them to inform themselves (Hütter & Ache, 2016;Pescetelli & Yeung, 2020;van der Plas, David, & Fleming, 2019). This is a particular pressing issue when faced with mis-and dis-information (Lazer et al, 2018;Pennycook & Rand, 2020). Such scenarios will require adaptive metacognitive systems to make inferences not only about themselves but also about others.…”

Section: Links To Other Types Of Information Search and Metacognitive Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metacognitive Computations for Information Search: Confidence in Control

Schulz

Fleming

Dayan

2021

Preprint

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The metacognitive sense of confidence can play a critical role in regulating decision-making. In particular, a lack of confidence can justify the explicit, potentially costly, instrumental acquisition of extra information that might resolve the underlying uncertainty. Recent work has suggested a statistically sophisticated tapestry behind the information governing both the making and monitoring of choices. Here, we extend this tapestry to reveal extra richness in the use of confidence for controlling information seeking. We thereby highlight how different models of metacognition can generate diverse relationships between action, confidence, and information search. More broadly, our work shows how crucial it can be to treat metacognitive monitoring and control together.

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“…However, the level of cognitive ability influences the degree to which people change their assessment of the news. Cognitive scientist believes that leveraging interventions that improve analytic and actively open‐minded thinking might lessen the belief in disinformation (Bronstein et al, 2019; Pennycook & Rand, 2019a, 2019b). Actively open‐minded thinking “involves the search for alternative explanations and the use of evidence to revise beliefs.” Furthermore, analytic thinking is “the disposition to initiate deliberate thought processes to reflect on intuitions and gut feelings” (Bronstein et al, 2019).…”

Section: Mitigating Disinformation Via Education Research and Collamentioning

confidence: 99%

Combating disinformation in a social media age

Shu

Bhattacharjee

Alatawi

et al. 2020

WIREs Data Min & Knowl

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The creation, dissemination, and consumption of disinformation and fabricated content on social media is a growing concern, especially with the ease of access to such sources, and the lack of awareness of the existence of such false information. In this article, we present an overview of the techniques explored to date for the combating of disinformation with various forms. We introduce different forms of disinformation, discuss factors related to the spread of disinformation, elaborate on the inherent challenges in detecting disinformation, and show some approaches to mitigating disinformation via education, research, and collaboration. Looking ahead, we present some promising future research directions on disinformation.

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The Psychology of Fake News

Cited by 34 publications

References 101 publications

Social influence in adolescence as a double-edged sword

Social influence in adolescence as a double-edged sword

Metacognitive Computations for Information Search: Confidence in Control

Combating disinformation in a social media age

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