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

人们接受科学证据的一个关键过程就是对科学证据的评价。非专业人士对科学的评价对公众接受研究并最终做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沟通的预期(作为生产者和接受者)和沟通伙伴(专家和外行；没有关于他/他的评价的信息)如何影响外行对科学证据的评价(认知调整)。其次，我计划与交流他们对科学主题(社会调谐)评估的合作伙伴一起，研究共享现实的创建。根据现有的研究，成功地创造一个共同的现实不仅应该取决于伴侣的认知专长，还应该取决于与伴侣的个人关系和联系的经验。缺乏个人联系可能是在非专业交流中创造共同现实的一个关键障碍。四个实验被用来调查个人与专家联系体验的因素和过程，包括计算机媒介交流的同步性，专家的自我表露，以及表示人际联系的基本语言特征(例如，集体代词，如“我们”或“我们”)。除了与基础科学的相关性外，该项目还具有重要的实际意义，特别是对于专家成功地将科学证据传递给普通人。

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.