Certain and Wrong: Why False Facts Feel True | Wired For This

Today, we’re joined by Dr. Cecilie S. Traberg.

The transcript for this episode will be available the day following the original airdate.

Links/Sources mentioned:

• Dr. Traberg’s website: https://www.cecilietraberg.com/ 

• Solomon’s Secret, a digital murder mystery game designed to explore the psychology of misinformation and social influence 

• Dr. Traberg’s research:

  • Traberg, C. S., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Psychological Inoculation against Misinformation: Current Evidence and Future Directions. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 700(1), 136–151. 

  • Traberg, C. S., & van der Linden, S. (2022). Birds of a feather are persuaded together: Perceived source credibility mediates the effect of political bias on misinformation susceptibility. Personality and Individual Differences, 185, 111269.

  • Traberg, C. S., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2024). Gamified inoculation reduces susceptibility to misinformation from political ingroups. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.

  • Traberg, C. S., Harjani, T., Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2024). The persuasive effects of social cues and source effects on misinformation susceptibility. Scientific Reports, 14(1). 

  • Cecilie Traberg, Morten, T., & van. (2024). Counteracting socially endorsed misinformation through an emotion-fallacy inoculation. Advances In/Psychology, 2. 

• Other relevant studies: 

  • Marks, J., Copland, E., Loh, E., Sunstein, C. R., & Tali Sharot. (2018). Epistemic spillovers: Learning others’ political views reduces the ability to assess and use their expertise in nonpolitical domains. Cognition, 188, 74–84. 

  • Hassoun, A., Beacock, I., Consolvo, S., Goldberg, B., Kelley, P. G., & Russell, D. M. (2023). Practicing information sensibility: How Gen Z engages with online information. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-17).

  • ‌Vidgen, B., Taylor, H., Pantazi, M., Anastasiou, Z., Inkster, B., & Margetts, H. (2021). Understanding vulnerability to online misinformation. 

  • Gawronski, B., Ng, N. L., & Luke, D. M. (2023). Truth sensitivity and partisan bias in responses to misinformation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 

  • Garrett, R. K., & Bond, R. M. (2021). Conservatives’ susceptibility to political misperceptions. Science Advances, 7(23). 

• One example of unintentionally spread misinformation: How a simple math error sparked a panic about black plastic kitchen utensils 

• Some examples of (earned) distrust of institutions: 

  • 5 times the US government revealed secrets it tried to keep hidden

  • Why we know so little about women’s health 

  • NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheet 

    
    

Wired For This is produced and edited by Nwabata Nnani and hosted by Celia Ford. 

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