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Belief Echoes: The Persistent Effects of Corrected Misinformation
Emily Thorson
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across three separate experiments, I find that exposure to negative political information continues to shape attitudes even after the information has been effectively discredited. I call these effects “belief echoes.” Results suggest that belief echoes can be created through an automatic or deliberative process. Belief echoes occur even when the misinformation is corrected immediately, the “gold standard” of journalistic fact-checking. The existence of belief echoes raises ethical concerns about journalists’ and fact-checking organizations’ efforts to publicly correct false claims.
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Peter Achterberg, Willem de Koster & Jeroen van der Waal
Public Understanding of Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Following up on suggestions that attitudes toward science are multi-dimensional, we analyze nationally representative survey data collected in the United States in 2014 (N = 2006), and demonstrate the existence of a science confidence gap: some people place great trust in scientific methods and principles, but simultaneously distrust scientific institutions. This science confidence gap is strongly associated with level of education: it is larger among the less educated than among the more educated. We investigate explanations for these educational differences. Whereas hypotheses deduced from reflexive-modernization theory do not pass the test, those derived from theorizing on the role of anomie are corroborated. The less educated are more anomic (they have more modernity-induced cultural discontents), which not only underlies their distrust in scientific institutions, but also fuels their trust in scientific methods and principles. This explains why this science confidence gap is most pronounced among the less educated.
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How Multiple Social Identities Are Related to Creativity
Niklas Steffens et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present research examined whether possessing multiple social identities (i.e., groups relevant to one’s sense of self) is associated with creativity. In Study 1, the more identities individuals reported having, the more names they generated for a new commercial product (i.e., greater idea fluency). In Study 2, multiple identities were associated with greater fluency and originality (mediated by cognitive flexibility, but not by persistence). Study 3 validated these findings using a highly powered sample. We again found that multiple identities increase fluency and originality, and that flexibility (but not persistence) mediated the effect on originality. Study 3 also ruled out several alternative explanations (self-affirmation, novelty seeking, and generalized persistence). Across all studies, the findings were robust to controlling for personality, and there was no evidence of a curvilinear relationship between multiple identities and creativity. These results suggest that possessing multiple social identities is associated with enhanced creativity via cognitive flexibility.
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Expense Neglect in Forecasting Personal Finances
Jonathan Berman et al.
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how consumers forecast their future spare money or “financial slack.” While consumers generally think that both their income and expenses will rise in the future, they underweight the extent to which their expected expenses will cut into their spare money, a phenomenon we term “expense neglect.” We test and rule out several possible explanations, and conclude that expense neglect is due in part to insufficient attention towards expectations about future expenses compared to future income. “Tightwad” consumers who are chronically attuned to expenses show less severe expense neglect than “spendthrifts” who are not. We further find that expectations regarding changes in income (and not changes in expenses) predict the Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiments — a leading macro-economic indicator. Finally, we conduct a meta-analysis of our entire file-drawer (27 studies, 8,418 participants) and find that, across studies, participants place 2.9 times the weight on income change as they do on expense change when forecasting changes in their financial slack, and that expense neglect is stronger for distant than near future forecasts.
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Power and Categorization: Power Increases the Number and Abstractness of Categories
Pamela Smith, Rachel Smallman & Derek Rucker
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across three experiments, participants formed a larger number of categories when in a state of high, compared to low, psychological power. Moreover, in contrast to prior categorization research, which suggests forming more categories is tantamount to reduced breadth of categorization, high-power participants also formed a larger number of superordinate (i.e., more abstract) categories than low-power participants. The present findings enhance the understanding of power in relation to categorization and simultaneously highlight the distinction between number and abstraction as fundamental aspects of categorization.
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The Reputational Consequences of Failed Replications and Wrongness Admission among Scientists
Adam Fetterman & Kai Sassenberg
PLoS ONE, December 2015
Abstract:
Scientists are dedicating more attention to replication efforts. While the scientific utility of replications is unquestionable, the impact of failed replication efforts and the discussions surrounding them deserve more attention. Specifically, the debates about failed replications on social media have led to worry, in some scientists, regarding reputation. In order to gain data-informed insights into these issues, we collected data from 281 published scientists. We assessed whether scientists overestimate the negative reputational effects of a failed replication in a scenario-based study. Second, we assessed the reputational consequences of admitting wrongness (versus not) as an original scientist of an effect that has failed to replicate. Our data suggests that scientists overestimate the negative reputational impact of a hypothetical failed replication effort. We also show that admitting wrongness about a non-replicated finding is less harmful to one’s reputation than not admitting. Finally, we discovered a hint of evidence that feelings about the replication movement can be affected by whether replication efforts are aimed one’s own work versus the work of another. Given these findings, we then present potential ways forward in these discussions.
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Exogenous cortisol causes a shift from deliberative to intuitive thinking
Zsofia Margittai et al.
Psychoneuroendocrinology, February 2016, Pages 131–135
Abstract:
People often rely on intuitive judgments at the expense of deliberate reasoning, but what determines the dominance of intuition over deliberation is not well understood. Here, we employed a psychopharmacological approach to unravel the role of two major endocrine stress mediators, cortisol and noradrenaline, in cognitive reasoning. Healthy participants received placebo, cortisol (hydrocortisone) and/or yohimbine, a drug that increases noradrenergic stimulation, before performing the cognitive reflection test (CRT). We found that cortisol impaired performance in the CRT by biasing responses towards intuitive, but incorrect answers. Elevated stimulation of the noradrenergic system, however, had no effect. We interpret our results in the context of the dual systems theory of judgment and decision making. We propose that cortisol causes a shift from deliberate, reflective cognition towards automatic, reflexive information processing.
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The Alternative Omen Effect: Illusory negative correlation between the outcomes of choice options
Déborah Marciano-Romm et al.
Cognition, January 2016, Pages 324–338
Abstract:
In situations of choice between uncertain options, one might get feedback on both the outcome of the chosen option and the outcome of the unchosen option (“the alternative”). Extensive research has shown that when both outcomes are eventually revealed, the alternative’s outcome influences the way people evaluate their own outcome. In a series of experiments, we examined whether the outcome of the alternative plays an additional role in the decision-making process by creating expectations regarding the outcome of the chosen option. Specifically, we hypothesized that people see a good (bad) alternative’s outcome as a bad (good) sign regarding their own outcome when the two outcomes are in fact uncorrelated, a phenomenon we call the “Alternative Omen Effect” (ALOE). Subjects had to repeatedly choose between two boxes, the outcomes of which were then sequentially revealed. In Experiments 1 and 2 the alternative’s outcome was presented first, and we assessed the individual’s prediction of their own outcome. In Experiment 3, subjects had to predict the alternative’s outcome after seeing their own. We find that even though the two outcomes were in fact uncorrelated, people tended to see a good (bad) alternative outcome as a bad (good) sign regarding their own outcome. Importantly, this illusory negative correlation affected subsequent behavior and led to irrational choices. Furthermore, the order of presentation was critical: when the outcome of the chosen option was presented first, the effect disappeared, suggesting that this illusory negative correlation is influenced by self-relevance. We discuss the possible sources of this illusory correlation as well as its implications for research on counterfactual thinking.
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Kou Murayama et al.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, forthcoming
Abstract:
People are often exposed to more information than they can actually remember. Despite this frequent form of information overload, little is known about how much information people choose to remember. Using a novel “stop” paradigm, the current research examined whether and how people choose to stop receiving new — possibly overwhelming — information with the intent to maximize memory performance. Participants were presented with a long list of items and were rewarded for the number of correctly remembered words in a following free recall test. Critically, participants in a stop condition were provided with the option to stop the presentation of the remaining words at any time during the list, whereas participants in a control condition were presented with all items. Across 5 experiments, the authors found that participants tended to stop the presentation of the items to maximize the number of recalled items, but this decision ironically led to decreased memory performance relative to the control group. This pattern was consistent even after controlling for possible confounding factors (e.g., task demands). The results indicated a general, false belief that we can remember a larger number of items if we restrict the quantity of learning materials. These findings suggest people have an incomplete understanding of how we remember excessive amounts of information.
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Alasdair Clarke & Amelia Hunt
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a series of related experiments, we asked people to choose whether to split their attention between two equally likely potential tasks or to prioritize one task at the expense of the other. In such a choice, when the tasks are easy, the best strategy is to prepare for both of them. As difficulty increases beyond the point at which people can perform both tasks accurately, they should switch strategy and focus on one task at the expense of the other. Across three very different tasks (target detection, throwing, and memory), none of the participants switched their strategy at the correct point. Moreover, the majority consistently failed to modify their strategy in response to changes in task difficulty. This failure may have been related to uncertainty about their own ability, because in a version of the experiment in which there was no uncertainty, participants uniformly switched at an optimal point.
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On the genetics of loss aversion: An interaction effect of BDNF Val66Met and DRD2/ANKK1 Taq1a
Gesine Voigt et al.
Behavioral Neuroscience, December 2015, Pages 801-811
Abstract:
Loss aversion is the tendency to overweight losses compared with gains in decision situations. Several studies have investigated the neurobiological background of this phenomenon and it was found that activation in the mesolimbic-mesocortical dopamine system during a gambling decision correlates with loss aversion. In a behavioral experiment with N = 143 subjects, the present study investigates the influence of 2 functional single-nucleotide polymorphisms on the BDNF gene (BDNF Val66Met polymorphism) and ANKK1 gene (DRD2 Taq1a/ANKK1 polymorphism), that are known to affect the dopamine system, on loss aversion. Additionally, associations of alexithymia, a personality construct describing the disability to consciously experience emotions in the self, with loss aversion and with the mentioned polymorphisms were assessed using the TAS-20 questionnaire, to replicate associations that have been reported before. Results revealed a significant interaction effect of the 2 polymorphisms on loss aversion. Carriers of the genetic constellation 66Met+/A1+ had the lowest loss aversion scores, compared with all other allelic groups. According to the literature this allelic configuration is characterized by a relatively low D2/3 receptor binding in the striatum and an impaired activity-dependent secretion of BDNF. This is the first study showing that loss aversion is related to naturally occurring differences in dopamine function.