The political (a)symmetry of metacognitive insight into detecting misinformation.

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).

Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation.

The spread of misinformation through media and social networks threatens many aspects of society, including public health and the state of democracies. One approach to mitigating the effect of misinformation focuses on individual-level interventions, equipping policymakers and the public with essential tools to curb the spread and influence of falsehoods. Here we introduce a toolbox of individual-level interventions for reducing harm from online misinformation. Comprising an up-to-date account of interventions featured in 81 scientific papers from across the globe, the toolbox provides both a conceptual overview of nine main types of interventions, including their target, scope and examples, and a summary of the empirical evidence supporting the interventions, including the methods and experimental paradigms used to test them. The nine types of interventions covered are accuracy prompts, debunking and rebuttals, friction, inoculation, lateral reading and verification strategies, media-literacy tips, social norms, source-credibility labels, and warning and fact-checking labels.

The Online Misinformation Engagement Framework.

Research on online misinformation has evolved rapidly, but organizing its results and identifying open research questions is difficult without a systematic approach. We present the Online Misinformation Engagement Framework, which classifies people's engagement with online misinformation into four stages: selecting information sources, choosing what information to consume or ignore, evaluating the accuracy of the information and/or the credibility of the source, and judging whether and how to react to the information (e.g., liking or sharing). We outline entry points for interventions at each stage and pinpoint the two early stages-source and information selection-as relatively neglected processes that should be addressed to further improve people's ability to contend with misinformation.

Time pressure reduces misinformation discrimination ability but does not alter response bias.

Many parts of our social lives are speeding up, a process known as social acceleration. How social acceleration impacts people's ability to judge the veracity of online news, and ultimately the spread of misinformation, is largely unknown. We examined the effects of accelerated online dynamics, operationalised as time pressure, on online misinformation evaluation. Participants judged the veracity of true and false news headlines with or without time pressure. We used signal detection theory to disentangle the effects of time pressure on discrimination ability and response bias, as well as on four key determinants of misinformation susceptibility: analytical thinking, ideological congruency, motivated reflection, and familiarity. Time pressure reduced participants' ability to accurately distinguish true from false news (discrimination ability) but did not alter their tendency to classify an item as true or false (response bias). Key drivers of misinformation susceptibility, such as ideological congruency and familiarity, remained influential under time pressure. Our results highlight the dangers of social acceleration online: People are less able to accurately judge the veracity of news online, while prominent drivers of misinformation susceptibility remain present. Interventions aimed at increasing deliberation may thus be fruitful avenues to combat online misinformation.

Boosting people's ability to detect microtargeted advertising.

Online platforms' data give advertisers the ability to "microtarget" recipients' personal vulnerabilities by tailoring different messages for the same thing, such as a product or political candidate. One possible response is to raise awareness for and resilience against such manipulative strategies through psychological inoculation. Two online experiments (total [Formula: see text]) demonstrated that a short, simple intervention prompting participants to reflect on an attribute of their own personality-by completing a short personality questionnaire-boosted their ability to accurately identify ads that were targeted at them by up to 26 percentage points. Accuracy increased even without personalized feedback, but merely providing a description of the targeted personality dimension did not improve accuracy. We argue that such a "boosting approach," which here aims to improve people's competence to detect manipulative strategies themselves, should be part of a policy mix aiming to increase platforms' transparency and user autonomy.

Root trauma and tooth loss through the application of pre-drilled transgingival fixation screws.

UNLABELLED: Transgingival fixation screws are used for intermaxillary fixation in different situations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the risk of root trauma and tooth loss using pre-drilled transgingival fixation screws. MATERIAL AND METHODS: 521 patients with mean age 26.9 (SD 9.9) years who had orthognathic surgery or trauma to the maxilla or mandible were selected for the study. Postoperative orthopantomographs (OPT) taken before and after screw removal were examined. The location of the screws and dental-root "hits" were recorded. RESULTS: 1663 screws were inserted either to the maxilla or to the mandible. 285 teeth (17.1%) showed radiologically proven contact between the dental roots and the screws or the dental roots were hit by the screw (screw inserted with more than the screws radius into the root). In three cases (0.2%) teeth were lost due to apical or periradicular inflammation, four teeth (0.2%) had to be root filled and five teeth (0.3%) were persistent painful at the follow-up examination before miniplate removal 10.3 (SD 8.1) months post-surgery. CONCLUSION: Dental problems occurred in 0.7% at the screw insertions sites. The use of transgingival fixation screws showed a low risk of tooth loss. Root defects healed without any incident. However surgeons must be aware of possible consequences to provide a safe treatment.

Changes after surgically-assisted maxillary expansion (SARME) to the dentoalveolar, palatal and nasal structures by using tooth-borne distraction devices.

Different devices are available to aid surgically-assisted maxillary expansion. In this study we have evaluated the changes to the anchoring teeth, the hard palate, and the lower nasal passage made by tooth-borne distraction devices. Thirty-one patients (mean (SD) age 28 (2) years) with deficiencies in the transverse width of the maxilla were examined by computed tomography and cone beam scans before and after operation. The data were analysed with the help of Wilcoxon's signed rank test and Spearman's r correlation. The mean (SD) distraction width was 6.5 (2.3) mm. All anchorage teeth were tilted (p<0.01). The axes changed by a mean (SD) of 4.8 (0.9)° in the first premolar and 3.1 (0.8)° in the first molar. The nasal isthmus increased by a mean (SD) of 2.5 (0.3) mm. The hard palate adjacent to the anchoring teeth increased anteriorly by a mean (SD) of 2.8 (0.4) mm and posteriorly by 2.7 (0.4) mm. The hard palate was lowered by 1.2 (0.8) mm. There was a significant correlation in the distraction width, with changes in the intercoronal and interapical distances of the anchoring premolars (p<0.05) and with the interapical distance of the anchoring molars (p<0.01). There was also a correlation between the distraction width and the overall gain in width of the lower nasal passage (p<0.05). The results suggested that surgically-assisted maxillary expansion with tooth-borne devices has significant effects on the anchoring teeth, the nasal floor, and the hard palate. Both tilting of the teeth and an evenly distributed movement of the segments were seen.