Source Credibility, Political Identity, and Factual Belief Revision

当人们从不同政治身份和专长的人那里学习时，他们如何了解事实并改变他们对世界的信念？对立的党派能有效地相互学习吗？或者，身份认同会因为增加基于群体的偏见而干扰学习吗？这项研究拓宽了我们对意见两极分化的潜在原因及其认知和情感基础的理解。这项研究有可能通过开发更有效的干预措施来消除学习过程的偏见，并提高信念的准确性，从而产生更有效的手段来减少错误信息的传播。由于对事实的两极分化意见往往是与环境、健康、技术和经济福利相关的重要公共政策冲突的核心，该项目提供的知识可以增加公众对有益政策的支持、解决政策冲突的可能性和对科学的信任。这些发现还有可能通过设计针对基于身份的偏见而量身定做的策略来改善科学交流。本研究旨在测量党派来源可信度对事实学习的影响，并产生证据，以理清信仰修正过程中潜在的政治和社会层面的工具和社会认同机制。研究人员还致力于开发一种可靠而简单的方法，通过在线调查得出信念修正的动态。在激励的实验框架中，研究小组根据信念作为来自该来源的信息的函数改变的程度来衡量来源的可信度，将来源的身份和特征(以真人为信息源)纳入信念更新任务的结构。学者们将这一框架应用于一系列相关研究。研究1测量来源可信度的基线水平作为党派意识的函数，并检查这些基线水平如何与党派认同强度、知识和情感两极分化的态度测量相关联。研究2通过实验测试党派偏见是由工具性认同机制还是社会认同机制造成的，将认知与情感分开。研究3将我们的框架扩展到专家来源和对科学事实的信念。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

How do people learn about facts and revise their beliefs about the world when they learn from others who vary in their political identities and expertise? Can opposing partisans learn effectively from one another? Or do identities interfere with learning because they increase group-based biases? This research broadens our understanding of the potential causes of the polarization of opinion and their cognitive and emotional bases. The research has the potential to lead to more effective means of reducing the spread of misinformation by developing more effective interventions to de-bias learning processes and improve the accuracy of beliefs. As polarized opinions about facts are often at the core of conflicts over important public policies pertaining to the environment, health, technology, and economic welfare, this project contributes knowledge that can increase public support for beneficial policies, the likelihood of policy conflict resolution, and trust in science. The findings also have the potential to improve science communication by designing strategies tailored to address the identity-based biases. This research seeks to measure partisan source credibility effects on factual learning and to generate evidence disentangling instrumental and social identity mechanisms underlying the political and social dimensions of belief revision processes. The researchers also aim to develop a reliable and simple method for eliciting the dynamics of belief revision through online surveys. In the incentivized experimental framework, the team measures a source’s credibility in terms of the extent to which beliefs change as a function of information from that source, incorporating sources’ identities and characteristics (with real people as information sources) into the structure of a belief updating task. The scholars apply this framework in a series of related studies. Study 1 measures baseline levels of source credibility as a function of partisanship and examines how these baseline levels are correlated with attitudinal measures of partisan identity strength, knowledge, and affective polarization. Study 2 experimentally tests whether partisan bias results from instrumental or social identity mechanisms, disentangling cognition from affect. Study 3 extends our framework to expert sources and beliefs about scientific facts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.