People tend to refer to information congruent with their preexisting attitudes whether or not the information is factual

Attitude Congruent Information

An example of confirmation bias is the widespread intuitive belief that women are more talkative than men. Once someone adopts this belief, they are likely to selectively notice and remember talkative women and silent men, while ignoring or quickly forgetting instances of silent women and talkative men.

Talkative Women as an Example of Confirmation Bias

Which of the following best describes the cognitive tendency known as confirmation bias?

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to selectively focus on cases that validate our pre-existing intuitive beliefs while actively disregarding or forgetting cases that contradict them. This mental shortcut leads individuals to reinforce incorrect assumptions by ignoring disconfirming evidence.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Google

- The information appears to be true or is believable 
- Being rewritten in different forms
- Being accessible through multiple sources
- Confirmation Bias 
- Authoritative bias 
- Targeting hot topics
- Indicating urgency
- The Sunk Cost Fallacy 
- emotional appeals 
- False Beliefs
- Labels can lead to errors in assessment of information
- False Memories
- Inaccurate evaluation of information
- Ease of Processing
- Underthinking
- Deliberative processes

Reasons Misinformation Spreads

Intuition is a method of knowing where individuals rely on their instincts, emotions, and gut feelings to guide their understanding rather than examining objective facts or applying rational logic. It involves accepting a belief as true simply because it inherently feels right or because someone's behavior intuitively seems unusual, prompting the need to critically evaluate whether such subjective knowledge should be fully trusted.

Intuition

Heuristics are mental shortcuts that people rely on to simplify the complex task of forming and maintaining beliefs. Because forming detailed and accurate beliefs requires extensive observation, memory, and analysis, individuals use these efficient cognitive strategies. However, relying on heuristics can sometimes lead to incorrect conclusions.

Heuristics

https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/psychmethods4e/

KPU Research Methods in Psychology - 4th American Edition

Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, M. D. (2020, April 22). Psychology (2nd ed.). OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/1-introduction

OpenStax Psychology (2nd ed.) Textbook

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Being Intertwined with Elements of Truth

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Being Rewritten in Different Forms

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Being Accessible Through Multiple Sources

Misinformation Gets Attention Through Targeting Hot Topics

A fallacy where individuals are less likely to give up an investment (financial or emotional) the more time they have put into it. 

The Sunk Cost Fallacy

A bias where individuals are more likely to follow figures of authority/influence. 

Authoritative Bias 

Many aspects of social media make it especially susceptible to the spread of misinformation. 
- Messages are easy to process, therefore easy to believe.
- Credibility is easily established by following friends, who often have similar views (which also establishes compatibility).
- Posts are shared by people you trust, establishes repetition and social consensus.
- Comments and related posts provide supporting evidence and familiarity.
- Users can gain a false sense of expertise, becoming very familiar with one perspective. 
- Lack of opposing ideas on a person’s feed is interpreted as a lack of different ideas overall.


The Susceptibility of Social Media to Misinformation

Errors in one's knowledge system that lead them to believe that an inaccurate piece of information is true.

False Beliefs

Labels can powerfully impact the way one assesses and interacts with information. Some labels have been known to distort perception and cause individuals to jump to inaccurate conclusions or misinterpret information.

The impact of labels on the assessment of information

Misinformation can spread because people are distracted by information other than accuracy. Some of these could include: party alignment, social relevance, or social reinforcement. 

Inattention-Based Account of Misinformation

A false memory is a recollection of an event, or details of an event, that did not actually occur. This phenomenon highlights that human memory is not a perfect, video-like recording of the past but is instead a reconstructive process capable of creating memories for things that never happened.

False Memories

- Cognitive biases 
- Accuracy of information is not a priority when gaining knowledge 
- The source of information is unknown or unreliable 
- Sources are often listed after the information has already been presented and embedded into one's knowledge base
- Evidence for a piece of information is not relevant  but gives the illusion of support 
- Alternative viewpoints are not considered
- Monitoring the accuracy of information takes great effort
- Working against one's own biases is difficult

Reasons for inaccurate evaluation of information

According to a study conducted by Cheng Zhou, Kai Li, and Yanhong Lu, misinformation containing specific linguistic qualities is more likely to be shared on social media. By examining the content of fake news posts and the number of shares, they found that misinformation containing persuasive and uncertainty words were more likely to be shared than true posts. The effect was moderated by the richness of the information. 

Linguistic Traits of Misinformation Online

During a crisis, social media is used to spread information. Anyone can take part in the spreading of information which can be bad. Trust during a crisis is important and if individuals' social media posts are not regulated or fact-checked like those belonging to an organization or agency misinformation spreads. Rumor's and misinformation can cause panic and lead to resources being spent on false leads.

Social Media is Unregulated: Double-edge Sword 

People are more likely to believe a claim that they have been exposed to repeatedly. Repetition increases the perception of social consensus, even when it is just one person’s account being repeated multiple times. The effect of repetition of messages is so strong that it can sway people who are unsure and even convince people who know it is false to accept it.


Repetition of Information

We are more likely to accept information that is easy to process. 


Ease of Processing

When people accept information intuitively, rather than using systematic reasoning to critically analyze it. Can affect people with lower cognitive ability, people who rely on intuitive thinking, and people in situations which elicit underthinking.


Underthinking

- Negative emotional state vs. positive emotional state
- High arousal conditions vs. low arousal conditions
- The cognitive impact of anger 
- Anger and suggestibility
- Anger's effect on speed and confidence 
- Post-truth situation

Influences of emotion on accepting misinformation

Discourse concerning the role of deliberation in the creation of false beliefs from misinformation has been centered on two main perspectives:
- Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R)
- Classical reasoning

Misinformation: Deliberative Processes

Social media algorithms analyze user behavior and prioritize content the platform believes the user wants to see and is most likely to engage with.

Social Media Algorithm

Defined as the extent to which news, regardless of its accuracy, is believed. Calculated as the average of one's belief in true news and belief in false news

Overall belief in fake news

A motivated reasoning account that posits that deliberation causes individuals to belief information (real or fake) that aligns with their political beliefs. This theory hypothesizes that there is a positive association between analytic thinking and perceived accuracy of headlines that align with one's beliefs. 

Motivated System 2 Reasoning (MS2R)

Confirmation Bias

MIPVU: First, annotators determine the contextual meaning of the target word. Then, they look up the word in a dictionary and search for a more basic meaning than the contextual meaning. If a more basic meaning exists, the contextual meaning differs from the basic meaning, and if it can be understood in comparison, then it is judged as a metaphor-related word.

Judge metaphoricity in a systematic way

A primary drawback of relying on intuition is that intuitive judgments are frequently incorrect. This vulnerability arises because instinctual decisions are driven by cognitive and motivational biases rather than being grounded in logical reasoning, objective facts, or scientific evidence.

Limitations of Intuition

Despite its limitations, intuition can occasionally be an advantageous decision-making tool. Continuously weighing every alternative and analyzing all possibilities can lead to paralyzing indecision. In such situations, making rapid choices guided by intuitive feelings can sometimes be superior to relying entirely on strict logical analysis.

Benefits of Intuition

Relying strictly on the method of authority to obtain knowledge is inherently problematic because authority figures are not infallible. They may provide incorrect information, base their conclusions on their own flawed intuition rather than empirical evidence, or possess hidden motives to mislead their audience.

Limitations of the Method of Authority

Because humans lack the natural cognitive capacity for extensive observation, memory, and complex analysis, forming perfectly accurate beliefs is nearly impossible. This cognitive limitation forces people to rely on mental shortcuts to process everyday information and form conclusions.

Cognitive Limits in Belief Formation

Motivational bias is the cognitive tendency to hold onto incorrect intuitive beliefs simply because it is emotionally pleasing or comforting if they were true. People maintain these incorrect beliefs, often despite a lack of empirical evidence, because the beliefs provide hope or foster positive feelings about themselves.

Motivational Bias

Scientists cultivate an attitude of skepticism, which means pausing to consider alternatives and to search for evidence—especially systematically collected empirical evidence—when there is enough at stake to justify doing so. It does not mean being cynical, distrustful, or questioning every claim one comes across.

Scientific Skepticism

Before conducting formal experiments, scientists must first formulate ideas and hypotheses to test. To generate these new concepts, researchers frequently draw upon foundational methods of knowing, including intuition, authority, rationalism, and basic empiricism, before subjecting them to rigorous scientific evaluation.

Idea Generation in the Scientific Method

An everyday example of intuition is believing that a friend is lying to you simply because she is acting strange and avoiding eye contact. This scenario illustrates how knowledge can be acquired through subjective, intuitive feelings about someone's behavior rather than objective evidence, raising the question of whether such sources should be trusted.

Example of Intuition: Friend Lying

Folk psychology encompasses the intuitive beliefs and commonsense notions people naturally develop about human behavior, thoughts, and feelings. Although some of these everyday assumptions are reasonably accurate, scientific research demonstrates that many intuitive beliefs are incorrect, highlighting the necessity of a formal scientific approach to psychology.

Folk Psychology

In the context of research methods, which of the following best defines intuition as a method of knowing?

Humans (and other animals) are considered cognitive misers. This is some being that conserves mental energy by simplifying the complexity of cognition. It leads to taking mental shortcuts  (heuristics) which can bias behavior.

Cognitive Misers

The use of heuristics is often triggered when certain conditions are met. These mental shortcuts are typically employed in situations characterized by: information overload, time constraints for decision-making, the low importance of the decision, a scarcity of information, or the spontaneous emergence of a suitable heuristic.

Conditions for Heuristic Usage

Our behavior is largely due to factors out of our control and awareness (such as heuristics). However, when we are asked to explain our behaviors, we readily provide reasoning for it while reconstructing the event. It often stems from wanting to look good to ourselves and to others.

Self-justification

- Substituting questions
- Representative heuristic 
- Availability heuristic
- Affect heuristic
- Anchoring 
- Stereotype
- Self-Based Heuristic (SBH)
- Frugal Cognitive Heuristic
- Bandwagon heuristic
- Endorsement heuristic
- Working backwards

Types of heuristics

Using heuristics in reasoning under uncertainty leads to predictable biases in behavior.  

Cognitive Bias

A number of errors in decision-making may result from an over-reliance on heuristics. These result in cognitive biases:
* Anchoring bias
* Confirmation bias
* Hindsight bias
* Representative bias
* Availability bias

Pitfalls to Problem Solving

A hiring manager has 200 applications for a job but only one hour to create a shortlist. They decide to only review applications from candidates who graduated from the same university they attended. Which of the following statements best evaluates this problem-solving approach?

A common example of relying on heuristics is the tendency to assume a belief is true simply because it is widely shared and makes intuitive sense. This mental shortcut is especially persuasive when the belief is endorsed by perceived experts, illustrating how individuals can adopt conclusions without conducting their own thorough empirical analysis.

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