On the limits of judgmental correction: Differences of fluency effects in bias awareness and naïve theories about bias direction.

在假新闻和大规模媒体操纵的时代，探索个人如何从不想要的影响中纠正自己的判断具有最高的社会意义。当人们需要对环境中的一种刺激做出判断时，他们不仅受到该刺激的与判断相关的特征和他们的思想内容的影响，而且还受到伴随着刺激感知和思维的元认知感觉的影响。一种有效的元认知感觉是加工流畅性的主观体验，即信息处理的轻松或困难的感觉。虽然流利可以是有用的，因为它使快速和毫不费力的判断，它也经常是一个偏见的来源，对判断的准确性有害的结果。这导致了大量关于纠正不必要的流利偏差的过程的研究，经典研究概述了判断性纠正的两个要求：a)意识到偏差的来源；b)有效地了解偏差效应的方向。然而，最近关于纠正流利效应的证据表明，一些流利效应是可以纠正的，但另一些却不能，即使上述要求似乎得到了满足。因此，这项建议的目的是探索一个新的调节变量的流利性纠正成功。我认为，不同的流利效应在a)偏见的突出程度，从而在偏见意识方面有所不同；b)相关的幼稚理论用于纠正的程度需要对偏见效应的方向有有效的了解。这将在四个方面进行测试，涉及流利性效应，在以前的研究中产生了关于纠正成功的混合证据：单词的可读性和词长对可信度判断的影响，在以前的研究中无法纠正；重复和颜色对比对真实性判断的影响，在以前的研究中可以部分纠正，甚至过度纠正。在集群A中复制了所有这些效应的修正性能后，集群B将测试偏向显著，集群C将测试参与者关于这些流利性变化对其判断的可能影响的方向的通俗理论。最后，分组D将证明，只有在偏向突出且参与者对影响方向有有效了解的情况下，才有可能成功纠正这些流利效应。

In times of fake news and massive media manipulation, it is of highest societal relevance to explore how individuals can correct their judgments from unwanted influences. When people need to make a judgment about a stimulus in their environment, they are influenced not only by judgment-relevant characteristics of that stimulus and the content of their thoughts but also by the metacognitive feelings that accompany stimulus perception and thinking. One potent metacognitive feeling is the subjective experience of processing fluency, that is, the feeling of ease or difficulty with which information is processed. While fluency can be useful because it enables fast and effortless judgments, it is also often a source of bias with harmful results for judgment accuracy. This led to a vast amount of research on the processes that allow the correction of unwanted fluency biases, and classical research outlined two requirements of judgmental correction: a) awareness of the source of bias; and b) valid knowledge of the direction of the biasing effect. However, recent evidence on the correction of fluency effects shows that some fluency effects can be corrected for but others cannot, even if the above-mentioned requirements were seemingly fulfilled. The aim of this proposal is therefore to explore a new moderating variable of fluency correction success. I propose that different fluency effects vary in a) the degree of bias salience and thus in bias awareness; and b) the degree to which the relevant naïve theories individuals use for correction entail valid knowledge about the direction of the biasing effect. This will be tested in four clusters involving fluency effects that have generated mixed evidence regarding correction success in previous studies: word pronounceability and word length effects on trustworthiness judgments, which could not be corrected for in previous studies; and repetition and color contrast effects on truth judgments, which could be partially corrected or even overcorrected in previous studies. After replicating the correction performance for all these effects in Cluster A, Cluster B will test the bias salience and Cluster C will test participants’ lay theories about the direction of a possible influence of these fluency variations on their judgments. Finally, Cluster D will demonstrate that a successful correction of these fluency effects is only possible when both the bias is made salient and participants have a valid knowledge about the direction of influence.