Paul J. Hill School of Business, University of Regina.
Kenneth Levene Graduate School of Business, University of Regina.
Psychol Sci. 2020 Jul;31(7):770-780. doi: 10.1177/0956797620939054. Epub 2020 Jun 30.
Across two studies with more than 1,700 U.S. adults recruited online, we present evidence that people share false claims about COVID-19 partly because they simply fail to think sufficiently about whether or not the content is accurate when deciding what to share. In Study 1, participants were far worse at discerning between true and false content when deciding what they would share on social media relative to when they were asked directly about accuracy. Furthermore, greater cognitive reflection and science knowledge were associated with stronger discernment. In Study 2, we found that a simple accuracy reminder at the beginning of the study (i.e., judging the accuracy of a non-COVID-19-related headline) nearly tripled the level of truth discernment in participants' subsequent sharing intentions. Our results, which mirror those found previously for political fake news, suggest that nudging people to think about accuracy is a simple way to improve choices about what to share on social media.
在两项涉及超过 1700 名美国成年人的在线研究中，我们提供了证据表明，人们分享关于 COVID-19 的虚假声明部分是因为他们在决定分享什么内容时，根本没有充分考虑内容是否准确。在研究 1 中，与直接询问准确性相比，参与者在社交媒体上决定分享内容时，在辨别真假内容方面的表现要差得多。此外，更高的认知反思和科学知识与更强的辨别力相关。在研究 2 中，我们发现，在研究开始时（即判断一个与 COVID-19 无关的标题的准确性）的一个简单的准确性提醒，几乎使参与者在随后的分享意图中辨别真相的水平提高了两倍。我们的研究结果与之前针对政治假新闻的研究结果相似，表明提醒人们考虑准确性是改善社交媒体上分享内容选择的一种简单方法。
