Psychology of Communication and New Media, University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany.
PLoS One. 2023 Mar 29;18(3):e0283238. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283238. eCollection 2023.
The philosophical concept of informal fallacies-arguments that fail to provide sufficient support for a claim-is introduced and connected to the topic of fake news detection. We assumed that the ability to identify informal fallacies can be trained and that this ability enables individuals to better distinguish between fake news and real news. We tested these assumptions in a two-group between-participants experiment (N = 116). The two groups participated in a 30-minute-long text-based learning intervention: either about informal fallacies or about fake news. Learning about informal fallacies enhanced participants' ability to identify fallacious arguments one week later. Furthermore, the ability to identify fallacious arguments was associated with a better discernment between real news and fake news. Participants in the informal fallacy intervention group and the fake news intervention group performed equally well on the news discernment task. The contribution of (identifying) informal fallacies for research and practice is discussed.
引入了非形式谬误的哲学概念——即论点未能为其主张提供充分支持——并将其与假新闻检测这一主题联系起来。我们假设，识别非形式谬误的能力可以通过训练来获得，而这种能力可以使个人更好地区分假新闻和真新闻。我们在一项两实验组（N=116）的被试间实验中检验了这些假设。两组参与者都参加了一个 30 分钟的基于文本的学习干预：一个是关于非形式谬误的，另一个是关于假新闻的。学习非形式谬误可以提高参与者在一周后识别谬误论点的能力。此外，识别谬误论点的能力与更准确地区分真新闻和假新闻有关。在假新闻识别任务中，非形式谬误干预组和假新闻干预组的参与者表现相当。（识别）非形式谬误对研究和实践的贡献进行了讨论。
