Abstract:
Political misinformation poses a major threat to democracies worldwide, often inciting intense disputes between opposing political groups. Despite its central role for informed electorates and political decision making, little is known about how aware people are of whether they are right or wrong when distinguishing accurate political information from falsehood. Here, we investigate people\'s metacognitive insight into their own ability to detect political misinformation. We use data from a unique longitudinal study spanning 12 waves over 6 months that surveyed a representative U.S. sample (N = 1,191) on the most widely circulating political (mis)information online. Harnessing signal detection theory methods to model metacognition, we found that people from both the political left and the political right were aware of how well they distinguished accurate political information from falsehood across all news. However, this metacognitive insight was considerably lower for Republicans and conservatives-than for Democrats and liberals-when the information in question challenged their ideological commitments. That is, given their level of knowledge, Republicans\' and conservatives\' confidence was less likely to reflect the correctness of their truth judgments for true and false political statements that were at odds with their political views. These results reveal the intricate and systematic ways in which political preferences are linked to the accuracy with which people assess their own truth discernment. More broadly, by identifying a specific political asymmetry-for discordant relative to concordant news-our findings highlight the role of metacognition in perpetuating and exacerbating ideological divides. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
摘要:
政治错误信息对全世界的民主国家构成了重大威胁,经常煽动对立政治团体之间的激烈争端。尽管它在知情选民和政治决策中发挥了核心作用,人们很少知道人们在区分准确的政治信息和虚假信息时是对还是错。这里,我们调查人们对自己发现政治错误信息的能力的元认知洞察力。我们使用来自6个月内12波的独特纵向研究的数据,该研究调查了一个代表性的美国样本(N=1,191),了解在线上最广泛传播的政治(错误)信息。利用信号检测理论方法对元认知进行建模,我们发现,政治左翼和政治右翼的人们都知道他们在所有新闻中如何区分准确的政治信息和虚假信息。然而,当有关信息挑战他们的意识形态承诺时,共和党人和保守派的这种元认知洞察力要比民主党人和自由派的要低得多。也就是说,鉴于他们的知识水平,共和党人和保守派的信心不太可能反映他们对与他们的政治观点不符的真实和虚假政治陈述的真实判断的正确性。这些结果揭示了复杂而系统的方式,其中政治偏好与人们评估自己的真相识别的准确性相关联。更广泛地说,通过确定特定的政治不对称-相对于和谐新闻的不和谐-我们的发现强调了元认知在延续和加剧意识形态分歧中的作用。(PsycInfo数据库记录(c)2024APA,保留所有权利)。