Lisi Matteo
Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Essex, UK.
Department of Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK.
R Soc Open Sci. 2023 Sep 6;10(9):230417. doi: 10.1098/rsos.230417. eCollection 2023 Sep.
The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an infodemic of misinformation and increasing polarization around public health measures, such as social distancing and national lockdowns. In this study, I examined metacognitive efficiency-the extent to which the subjective feeling of knowing predicts the objective accuracy of knowledge-as a tool to understand and measure the assimilation of misleading misinformation in a balanced sample of Great Britain's population ( = 1689), surveyed at the end of the third national lockdown. Using a signal-detection theory approach to quantify metacognitive efficiency, I found that at the population level, metacognitive efficiency for COVID-19 knowledge was impaired compared with general knowledge, indicating a worse alignment between confidence levels and the actual ability to discern true and false statements. Crucially, individual differences in metacognitive efficiency related to COVID-19 knowledge predicted health-protective behaviours, vaccination intentions and attitudes towards public health measures, even after accounting for the level of knowledge itself and demographic covariates, such as education, income and political alignment. These results reveal the significant impact of misinformation on public beliefs and suggest that fostering confidence in accurate knowledge should be a key target for science communication efforts aimed at promoting compliance with public health and social measures.
新冠疫情伴随着错误信息的泛滥，以及围绕社交距离和全国封锁等公共卫生措施的两极分化加剧。在本研究中，我考察了元认知效率（即知道感在多大程度上能够预测知识的客观准确性），以此作为理解和衡量在英国人口均衡样本（ = 1689）中误导性错误信息同化情况的一种工具，该样本是在第三次全国封锁结束时进行调查的。通过信号检测理论方法来量化元认知效率，我发现，在总体层面，与一般知识相比，新冠知识的元认知效率受到了损害，这表明信心水平与辨别真假陈述的实际能力之间的一致性较差。至关重要的是，即使在考虑了知识本身的水平以及人口统计学协变量（如教育程度、收入和政治倾向）之后，与新冠知识相关的元认知效率的个体差异仍能预测健康保护行为、疫苗接种意愿以及对公共卫生措施的态度。这些结果揭示了错误信息对公众信念的重大影响，并表明增强对准确知识的信心应成为旨在促进遵守公共卫生和社会措施的科学传播努力的关键目标。
