Department of Psychology, Yale University.
Psychol Sci. 2019 Aug;30(8):1195-1204. doi: 10.1177/0956797619856844. Epub 2019 Jul 10.
When evaluating information, we cannot always rely on what has been presented as truth: Different sources might disagree with each other, and sometimes there may be no underlying truth. Accordingly, we must use other cues to evaluate information-perhaps the most salient of which is consensus. But what counts as consensus? Do we attend only to surface-level indications of consensus, or do we also probe deeper and consider why sources agree? Four experiments demonstrated that individuals evaluate consensus only superficially: Participants were equally confident in conclusions drawn from a true consensus (derived from independent primary sources) and a false consensus (derived from only one primary source). This phenomenon was robust, occurring even immediately after participants explicitly stated that a true consensus was more believable than a false consensus. This illusion of consensus reveals a powerful means by which misinformation may spread.
在评估信息时，我们不能总是依赖于被呈现为事实的内容：不同的来源可能存在分歧，有时可能根本没有事实依据。因此，我们必须使用其他线索来评估信息——其中最突出的可能是共识。但是，什么才算是共识呢？我们是否只关注共识的表面迹象，还是也会深入探究并考虑来源为何达成一致？四项实验表明，个体仅对共识进行表面评估：参与者对从真正的共识（源自独立的原始资料）和虚假共识（仅源自一个原始资料）得出的结论同样有信心。这种现象非常稳健，即使在参与者明确表示真实共识比虚假共识更可信之后，仍然存在。这种共识的错觉揭示了错误信息传播的一种强大手段。
