SaTC: CORE: Small: How False Beliefs Form and How to Correct Them

现代科技使得虚假信息比以往传播得更快更远。目前迫切需要了解错误信息对人们信念的现实影响，以及如何最好地纠正错误信念。通过一系列的实验室实验和自然主义实验，项目团队正在研究在现实环境中，重复对信念的影响，以及如何更有效地抵制错误信息。该项目将为旨在减少错误信息影响的现实世界实践提供信息。事实核查从业人员被咨询，以帮助指导研究，结果将与他们讨论。一系列研究考察了重复在日常生活中是如何影响信念的。研究结果将决定通常观察到的重复对信念的影响是否可以推广到现实世界的重复，或者它们是否是广泛使用实验室任务和材料的产物。这些研究探讨了为什么重复会让人对某些类型的信息更深信不疑。通过研究这些影响日常生活的主要领域的基本心理过程——社交媒体上的错误信息——这项工作将对旨在减少错误信息影响的现实世界实践产生影响。利用认知心理学的核心原则，另一系列研究调查了如何最好地纠正错误信念。利用从记忆、语言、语言学和通信领域现有理论中得出的预测，该项目正在测试各种假设的设计特征，以提高错误信息揭穿策略的有效性。研究结果将揭示成功揭穿错误信息背后的认知机制，以及事实核查员应该如何最好地展示他们的发现。总的来说，结果将告知和约束当前关于信仰如何形成和可以改变的理论。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Modern technologies allow false information to spread faster and further than ever before. There is currently an urgent need to understand the real-world effects of misinformation on people’s beliefs and how to best correct false beliefs. Through a series of laboratory and naturalistic experiments, the project team is examining the effects of repetition on belief in real-world settings and how to more effectively counter-act misinformation. This project will inform real-world practices aimed at reducing the impact of misinformation. Fact-checking practitioners are consulted to help guide the research, and results will be discussed with them. A series of studies examines how repetition affects belief in daily life. Findings will determine whether the commonly observed effects of repetition on belief are generalizable to real-world repetition or if they are an artifact of widespread use of laboratory tasks and materials. The studies explore why repetition increases belief more for some types of information than others. By examining these basic psychological processes in the primary domain within which they affect daily life – misinformation on social media – this work will have implications for real-world practices aimed at reducing the impact of misinformation. Leveraging core principles of cognitive psychology, another series of studies investigates how to best correct false beliefs. Using predictions derived from existing theories within memory, language, linguistics and communications, the project is testing various design features hypothesized to improve the effectiveness of misinformation debunking strategies. Findings will reveal the cognitive mechanisms underlying successful misinformation debunking, and how fact-checkers should best present their findings. Overall, the results will inform and constrain current theories of how beliefs form and can be changed.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.