Reception and production of scientific information in Wikipedia: The influence of hindsight bias

当外行人在互联网上搜索信息时，他们经常会遇到各种各样的科学发现，这些发现往往是不一致的，因此给接受者带来了挑战。在第一个项目中，我们提出后见之明偏见通过关注结果一致的信息来促进对冲突证据的处理。我们的研究结果支持了这一观点，对网络内容的接受者和生产者都是如此。然而，维基百科文章中的后见之明偏见仅限于一种特定类型的事件——灾难。在目前的研究计划中，我们提出了这种结果模式的三种潜在解释，而测试哪种解释可以解释结果是这个项目的四个主要目标之一。其次，我们的目标是确定我们获得的接受效应的潜在机制：后见之明偏见在文章的读者中增加，这些文章的后见之明偏见超过了他们先前的个人（经典）后见之明偏见。本研究计划的第三个主要目标是调查在维基百科等动态修订背景下出现的接收和生产过程的相互作用。最后但并非最不重要的是，该项目的第四个主要目标是检查在网络内容的生产和接收中针对后见之明偏见的潜在对策。我们将结合实地研究和实验室研究，以确保我们的发现在内部和外部的有效性。

When laypersons search the Internet for information they are frequently confronted with a variety of scientific findings, which are often inconsistent and thus provide a challenge for the recipient. In the first project we proposed that hindsight bias facilitates the handling of conflicting evidence by focussing on outcome consistent information. Our findings support this notion both, for recipients as well as for producers of web contents. However, hindsight bias in Wikipedia articles was limited to one particular type of events - disasters. In the present research proposal we suggest three poten-tial explanations for this pattern of results and it is one of the four main goals of this project to test which explanation accounts for the results. Secondly we aim at identifying the underlying mechanisms of the reception effects we obtained: hindsight bias increased in readers of articles that were biased by hindsight above and beyond their prior individual (classic) hindsight bias. The third major goal of this research proposal is to investigate the interplay of reception and production processes that arise in the context of dynamic revisions such as in Wikipedia. Last but not least, the fourth major goal of the project is to examine potential countermeasures against hindsight bias both, in the production and reception of web contents. We will make use of a combination of field and lab studies in order to ensure both, external and internal validity of our findings.