Effects of Communication with Experts on the Evaluation of Ambiguous Scientific Evidence: Cognitive Tuning and Social Tuning

科学证据的评价是人们接受科学证据的一个重要环节。外行对科学的评价对于公众接受研究并最终作出资助决定起着重要作用。本项目的目的是从社会心理学的角度调查影响外行人对相互矛盾的科学证据的评价和元认知判断（确定性）的过程。首先，我提出了两个实验来调查如何预期的通信（作为生产者与收件人）和通信的合作伙伴（专家与外行，没有关于她/他的评价信息）影响评价的科学证据外行（认知调谐）。第二，我计划研究与合作伙伴一起创建共享现实，这些合作伙伴交流他们对科学主题的评价（社会调整）。根据现有的研究，成功地创造一个共同的现实不仅取决于伙伴的知识专长，而且还取决于与伙伴的个人关系和联系的经验。个人联系的缺乏可能是在外行与专家沟通中创建共享现实的关键障碍。本文提出了四个实验来研究与专家建立个人联系的因素和过程，包括计算机中介交流的同步性、专家的自我表露和人际联系的基本语言特征（例如，集体代词，如“我们”或“我们”）。除了与基础科学相关外，该项目还具有重要的实际意义，特别是对于专家成功地向外行传播科学证据。

A key process in people's reception of scientific evidence is the evaluation of scientific evidence. The evaluation of science by laypeople plays an important role for the acceptance of research by the general public and ultimately funding decisions. The aim of this project is to investigate the processes affecting laypersons' evaluations and meta-cognitive judgments (certainty) regarding conflicting scientific evidence from a social-psychological perspective. First, I propose two experiments to investigate how the anticipation of communication (as producer vs. recipient) and the communication partner (expert vs. layperson; without information about her/his evaluation) influence evaluations of scientific evidence by laypeople (cognitive tuning). Second, I plan to examine the creation of a shared reality with partners who communicate their evaluation of a scientific topic (social tuning). According to extant research, the successful creation of a shared reality should depend not only on a partner's epistemic expertise but also on the experience of a personal relation and connection with the partner. The lack of personal connection is presumably a key obstacle to the creation of a shared reality in lay-expert communication. Four experiments are proposed to investigate factors and processes underlying the experience of a personal connection with experts, including the synchronicity of computer-mediated communication, self-disclosure of the experts, and basic language features signaling an interpersonal connection (e.g., collective pronouns like "we" or "us"). Beyond its relevance for basic science the project has important practical implications, especially for experts' successful communication of scientific evidence to laypeople.