PSYC206 - Misinformation Acceptance & Mental Processes - Report Writing - Academic Assignment Help

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The research report for T3-2020 has six core readings, listed below. I advise that you read each  in the order listed. Five are available from original sources via Dixson library, and the sixth is  the textbook (full details on each are provided in References). 

The first paper, by Lewandowsky et al. (2012) provides an overview of what misinformation is,  its persistence even after a correction (known as the continued influence effect), and possible  interventions which may reduce the initial acceptance of misinformation or, once accepted, assist  with removal after a correction. 

Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz & Cook (2012). Misinformation and its correction:  Continued influence and successful debiasing. 

Next, we focus on an intervention in the form of a training activity which is used to reduce  misinformation acceptance. Is there a means of training people to better identify misinformation in  the form of false news reports?

This paper includes a reasonably dense coverage for the method and results of three studies.  You might find these sections difficult, so I would suggest that you only read Sections 1, 5 and 6.  Pennycook and Rand conclude that insufficient rational thought (analytical reasoning) is a  significant contributor to misinformation acceptance.

But rational thought is not a very specific  reference for the mental processes that underlie it. In cognitive psychology strong arguments can be  made suggesting that analytical reasoning / rational thought is underpinned by a “set of general purpose control processes [information-general] which regulate our thoughts and behaviours”  (Miyake & Friedman, 2012, p.9) referred to as executive functions, or executive processes.

These  executive processes include inhibition, shifting, and updating. Might one of these processes of  executive function determine individual differences for accepting misinformation? For our study  we chose to focus on updating, which was operationalised through the Letter Memory Task  described in the Materials appendix at the end of this document.

What is Misinformation? 

We often receive information which turns out to be false, and yet at the time we consider it to  be true (Lewandowsky et al., 2012; Eysenck & Keane, 2015/2020). Of course, there is often no  immediate way of assessing the truth of information as one encounters it, but often the likely  truthfulness of information can be assessed on the basis of other information sources.

For example,  the motivation a speaker might have for making a claim, the base-rate that a claim is true (Eysenck  & Keane, p.624[548]), and the internal coherence of the claim. Some individuals seem to be more  sensitive to the likely truthfulness of information, and less susceptible to misinformation.

One  context which has become quite topical in public life is the phenomenon of false (fake) news. This  is a term that has frequently been attributed to both factual news, and that which does turn out to be  wrong (misinformation). In both cases, this term of false news is often used for political purposes.  Yet our social, political, and economic systems would function better if we were all better at  discriminating the truth value of information in the public domain. Is a claim likely to be true, or is  it likely to be false? 

How can we reduce misinformation acceptance? 

There are various approaches to reducing initial misinformation acceptance. Some involve  warnings that specific types of information may be incorrect, and these warnings may be made  repeatedly. This approach focusses on prospective content, and results have been mixed (Lewandowsky et al., 2012). This is an example of a general approach involving increased  scepticism for any new information.

While possibly reducing misinformation acceptance, there are  also negative outcomes through being overly sceptical; for example, limiting one’s scope for the  adoption of new valid ideas. A more active approach which focusses on the process of reasoning,  rather than information content, is to consider the nature and motivation behind claims one  encounters in the public domain, through cognitive inoculation (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019). 

What mental processes are associated with misinformation acceptance? 

The idea that susceptibility to misinformation is due to insufficient processing (i.e., inadequate  analytical reasoning) rather than scepticism or pre-existing belief states (i.e., motivated reasoning)  was pursued by Pennycook and Rand (2019). They showed that it was reduced application of analytical reasoning which predicted misinformation acceptance.

The measure of analytical  reasoning used by Pennycook and Rand was the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT). This presents a  problem which a participant has to solve, with the correct solution requiring analytical reasoning.  Individual differences in analytical reasoning can then be identified. But the CRT involves a  reasonably complex task, which fails to isolate the fundamental mental processes which may be  specifically responsible for the individual differences.

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