Overconfidence in news judgments is associated with false news susceptibility.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Lyons BA
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8201962 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Exposure to 'fake news' can result in false memories, with possible consequences for downstream behaviour. Given the sharp rise in online misinformation during the coronavirus pandemic, it is important to understand the factors that influence the development of false memories. The present study measured susceptibility to false memories following exposure to fabricated news stories about the pandemic in a sample of 3746 participants. We investigated the effect of individual differences in (1) knowledge about COVID-19, (2) engagement with media or discussion about the coronavirus, (3) anxiety about COVID-19 and (4) analytical reasoning. Notably, objectively and subjectively assessed knowledge about COVID-19 were not significantly correlated. Objectively assessed knowledge was associated with fewer false memories but more true memories, suggesting a true discrimination between true and fake news. In contrast, participants who merely believed themselves to be very knowledgeable were more likely to report a memory for true stories, but showed no reduction in false memories. Similarly, individuals who reported high levels of media engagement or anxiety about COVID-19 reported an increase in true (but not false) memories. Finally, higher levels of analytical reasoning were associated with fewer memories for both true and fabricated stories, suggesting a stricter threshold for reporting a memory for any story. These data indicate that false memories can form in response to fake COVID-19 news and that susceptibility to this misinformation is affected by the individual's knowledge about and interaction with COVID-19 information, as well as their tendency to think critically.
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Project description:How does the credibility we attribute to media sources influence our opinions and judgments derived from news? Participants read headlines about the social behavior of depicted unfamiliar persons from websites of trusted or distrusted well-known German news media. As a consequence, persons paired with negative or positive headlines were judged more negative or positive than persons associated with neutral information independent of source credibility. Likewise, electrophysiological signatures of slow and controlled evaluative brain activity revealed a dominant influence of emotional headline contents regardless of credibility. Modulations of earlier brain responses associated with arousal and reflexive emotional processing show an effect of negative news and suggest that distrusted sources may even enhance the impact of negative headlines. These findings demonstrate that though we may have distinct perceptions about the credibility of media sources, information processing and social judgments rely on the emotional content of headlines, even when they stem from sources we distrust.
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Project description:Reducing the spread of misinformation, especially on social media, is a major challenge. We investigate one potential approach: having social media platform algorithms preferentially display content from news sources that users rate as trustworthy. To do so, we ask whether crowdsourced trust ratings can effectively differentiate more versus less reliable sources. We ran two preregistered experiments (n = 1,010 from Mechanical Turk and n = 970 from Lucid) where individuals rated familiarity with, and trust in, 60 news sources from three categories: (i) mainstream media outlets, (ii) hyperpartisan websites, and (iii) websites that produce blatantly false content ("fake news"). Despite substantial partisan differences, we find that laypeople across the political spectrum rated mainstream sources as far more trustworthy than either hyperpartisan or fake news sources. Although this difference was larger for Democrats than Republicans-mostly due to distrust of mainstream sources by Republicans-every mainstream source (with one exception) was rated as more trustworthy than every hyperpartisan or fake news source across both studies when equally weighting ratings of Democrats and Republicans. Furthermore, politically balanced layperson ratings were strongly correlated (r = 0.90) with ratings provided by professional fact-checkers. We also found that, particularly among liberals, individuals higher in cognitive reflection were better able to discern between low- and high-quality sources. Finally, we found that excluding ratings from participants who were not familiar with a given news source dramatically reduced the effectiveness of the crowd. Our findings indicate that having algorithms up-rank content from trusted media outlets may be a promising approach for fighting the spread of misinformation on social media.
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Project description:With the growing global acceptance of cannabis and its widespread use by eyewitnesses and suspects in legal cases, understanding the popular drug's ramifications for memory is a pressing need. In a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial, we examined the acute and delayed effects of ?9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) intoxication on susceptibility to false memory in 64 healthy volunteers. Memory was tested immediately (encoding and retrieval under drug influence) and 1 wk later (retrieval sober). We used three different methods (associative word lists and two misinformation tasks using virtual reality). Across all methods, we found evidence for enhanced false-memory effects in intoxicated participants. Specifically, intoxicated participants showed higher false recognition in the associative word-list task both at immediate and delayed test than controls. This yes bias became increasingly strong with decreasing levels of association between studied and test items. In a misinformation task, intoxicated participants were more susceptible to false-memory creation using a virtual-reality eyewitness scenario and virtual-reality perpetrator scenario. False-memory effects were mostly restricted to the acute-intoxication phase. Cannabis seems to increase false-memory proneness, with decreasing strength of association between an event and a test item, as assessed by different false-memory paradigms. Our findings have implications for how and when the police should interview suspects and eyewitnesses.
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Project description:Psychological and physiological evidence has demonstrated that the underlying mechanisms for empathy and for autobiographical memories were related to a great extent. However, whether the facilitative effect of empathy on memory also applied to misinformation was unknown. To test this, we used a misinformation paradigm on a sample of 51 participants aged 20-27. The participants viewed videos that evoked different degrees of empathy, and then were fed misleading information. The participants' susceptibility to misleading information was lower for the videos that provoked a high degree of empathy compared to the videos that provoked a low degree of empathy. Based on our data, we conclude that empathy can prevent people from being misled by false information.
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Project description:Previous studies on the neurocognitive impact of cannabis use have found working and declarative memory deficits that tend to normalize with abstinence. An unexplored aspect of cognitive function in chronic cannabis users is the ability to distinguish between veridical and illusory memories, a crucial aspect of reality monitoring that relies on adequate memory function and cognitive control. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that abstinent cannabis users have an increased susceptibility to false memories, failing to identify lure stimuli as events that never occurred. In addition to impaired performance, cannabis users display reduced activation in areas associated with memory processing within the lateral and medial temporal lobe (MTL), and in parietal and frontal brain regions involved in attention and performance monitoring. Furthermore, cannabis consumption was inversely correlated with MTL activity, suggesting that the drug is especially detrimental to the episodic aspects of memory. These findings indicate that cannabis users have an increased susceptibility to memory distortions even when abstinent and drug-free, suggesting a long-lasting compromise of memory and cognitive control mechanisms involved in reality monitoring.
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Project description:People self-assess their relative ability when making career choices. Thus, confidence in their own abilities is likely an important factor for selection into various career paths. In a sample of 711 first-year students we examine whether there are systematic differences in confidence levels across fields of study. We find that our experimental confidence measures significantly vary between fields of study: While students in business related academic disciplines (Political Science, Law, Economics, and Business Administration) exhibit the highest confidence levels, students of Humanities range at the other end of the scale. This may have important implications for subsequent earnings and professions students select themselves in.
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Project description:This paper contributes to a better understanding of the biological underpinnings of overconfidence by analyzing performance predictions in the Cognitive Reflection Test with and without monetary incentives. In line with the existing literature we find that the participants are too optimistic about their performance on average; incentives lead to higher performance; and males score higher than females on this particular task. The novelty of this paper is an analysis of the relation between participants' performance prediction accuracy and their second to fourth digit ratio. It has been reported that the digit ratio is a negatively correlated bio-marker of prenatal testosterone exposure. In the un-incentivized treatment, we find that males with low digit ratios, on average, are significantly more overconfident about their performance. In the incentivized treatment, however, we observe that males with low digit ratios, on average, are less overconfident about their performance. These effects are not observed in females. We discuss how these findings fit into the literature on testosterone and decision making and how they might help to explain seemingly opposing evidence.
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Project description:Confidence and overconfidence are essential aspects of human nature, but measuring (over)confidence is not easy. Our approach is to consider students' forecasts of their exam grades. Part of a student's grade expectation is based on the student's previous academic achievements; what remains can be interpreted as (over)confidence. Our results are based on a sample of about 500 second-year undergraduate students enrolled in a statistics course in Moscow. The course contains three exams and each student produces a forecast for each of the three exams. Our models allow us to estimate overconfidence quantitatively. Using these models we find that students' expectations are not rational and that most students are overconfident, in agreement with the general literature. Less obvious is that overconfidence helps: given the same academic achievement students with larger confidence obtain higher exam grades. Female students are less overconfident than male students, their forecasts are more rational, and they are also faster learners in the sense that they adjust their expectations more rapidly.
| S-EPMC5770583 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundA giant protein called BAP (biofilm-associated protein) plays a role in biofilm formation and adhesion to host cells in A. baumannii. Most of the protein is made by arrays of 80-110 aa modules featuring immunoglobulin-like (Ig-like) motifs.ResultsThe survey of 541 A. baumannii sequenced strains belonging to 108 STs (sequence types) revealed that BAP is highly polymorphic, distinguishable in three main types for changes both in the repetitive and the COOH region. Analyzing the different STs, we found that 29 % feature type-1, 40 % type-2 BAP, 11 % type-3 BAP, 20 % lack BAP. The type-3 variant is restricted to A. baumannii, type-1 and type-2 BAP have been identified also in other species of the Acinetobacter calcoaceticus-baumannii (ACB) complex. A. calcoaceticus and A. pittii also encode BAP-like proteins in which Ig-like repeats are replaced by long tracts of alternating serine and aspartic acid residues. We have identified in species of the ACB complex two additional proteins, BLP1 and BLP2 (BAP-like proteins 1 and 2) which feature Ig-like repeats, share with BAP a sequence motif at the NH2 terminus, and are similarly expressed in stationary growth phase. The knock-out of either BLP1 or BLP2 genes of the A. baumannii ST1 AYE strain severely affected biofilm formation, as measured by comparing biofilm biomass and thickness, and adherence to epithelial cells. BLP1 is missing in the majority of type-3 BAP strains. BLP2 is largely conserved, but is frequently missing in BAP-negative cells.ConclusionsMultiple proteins sharing Ig-like repeats seem to be involved in biofilm formation. The uneven distribution of the different BAP types, BLP1, and BLP2 is highly indicative that alternative protein complexes involved in biofilm formation are assembled in different A. baumannii strains.
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