People's tendency to believe, share, and act upon disinformation (fake news) is a serious threat to civic engagement. Psychologists are studying what makes people more or less likely to believe false claims. Here are some excerpts from a brief article published in Buzzfeed, which summarized a few studies about people's willingness to believe what they read.
"What we find in our research really robustly is that we can push around people's feelings of truth using things like photographs and audio quality, and even the ease of pronouncing someone's name," said [researcher] Newman.
Here's an example of a study on how perceptions of "truthiness" can be influenced:
In 2012 Newman co-authored another paper with studies that found photographs can inflate the sense of "truthiness" that people get from reading a statement.
The sort of photographs that the researchers used for this research were "non-probative", meaning that they didn't actually contain any information about the claims being made.
One study ...found that if participants were given a trivia statement such as "Macadamia nuts are in the same evolutionary family as peaches", they were more likely to believe the statement was true if a photograph of macadamias simply appeared alongside the sentence [compared to no photo].
Bonus: Stephen Colbert (who coined the term "truthiness") also summarizes it in this clip.
Questions about the first example:
a) What are the two variables in the macadamia nuts study? Name each variable, its apparent levels, and indicate if it is measured or manipulated.
b) Do you think the "photo appearance" variable was manipulated as between-groups or within-groups? Explain your reasoning.
c) Sketch a small bar graph depicting the results of this study, as described by the journalist.
d) Ask three questions about the statistical validity of the macadamia nut study--your three questions should address effect size, precision, and replication. (Note--the answers to your questions might be present in the original empirical article.)
Here's a second example:
A study published in March found that people were less likely to believe an academic researcher on the radio if the audio quality of the recording was poor or glitchy.
The study involved 97 participants, who were instructed to listen to recordings of different pieces of science news and assess the quality of the research and the researcher who was reporting it.
Half of the audio recordings were edited to sound as though they were recorded on a bad phone line. The listeners who heard these recordings rated the credibility of the researcher and the studies they were discussing as significantly less favourable than recordings with higher audio quality.
Questions about the second example:
e) What are the two variables in the audio quality study? Name each variable, and indicate if it is measured or manipulated.
f) Do you think the "audio quality" variable was manipulated as between-groups or within-groups? Explain your reasoning.
g) Sketch a small bar graph depicting the results of this study, as described by the journalist.
h) Ask three questions about the statistical validity of the audio quality study--your three questions should address effect size, precision, and replication. (Note--the answers to your questions might be present in the original empirical article.)
i) Now consider the internal validity of the audio quality study: Why would random assignment be important in this study?
Selected answers (use these answers as models to help answer the audio quality questions, if needed)
a) One variable is the appearance of a photo; its levels are "photo or no photo." It is manipulated.
A second variable is "level of belief in the trivia statement" or "rated truthiness." Its levels probably range from "low belief" to "high belief". It is measured.
b) For a single fact, the presence of a photo would have to be manipulated as between groups--people would have to see the fact either with or without the photo. If they were exposed to both levels of the variable (a within-groups design), people might wonder why they are being asked to rate the same fact two times. However, in the study itself, participants were exposed to multiple facts, some of which were accompanied by a photo and some of which were not....so that makes the variable within-subjects when you consider all of the facts together.
c) Sketch a small bar graph depicting the results of this study, as described by the journalist.
d) Ask three questions about the statistical validity of the macadamia nut study--your three questions should address effect size, precision, and replication. (Note--the answers to your questions might be present in the original empirical article.)
For effect size, you could ask questions such as, "how far apart were the truthiness ratings?" "How big is the difference between the photo and no-photo group?" or "What is the d? (or other effect size)"
For precision you could ask, "what is the 95% CI of the effect size estimate?"
For replication you could ask, "has this effect been replicated in other studies? What do those other studies say?"
I would like to thank my student Emily Hogan for sharing this example and Buzzfeed story with me!
