Smartphone use and well-being in Pakistan: Comparing the effect of self-reported and actual smartphone use.

Objective: Past work has shown that smartphone use has negative effects on well-being. Yet, most evidence relies on self-reported measures of smartphone use and comes from Western democracies. We examined the relationship between both self-reported and actual smartphone use and well-being in Pakistan, a country that is under-researched in the Global South. Additionally, we investigated the moderating effect of the fear of missing out (FoMO). Methods: We conducted an online survey among 427 Pakistani citizens. Participants reported their smartphone use and well-being (i.e., levels of depression, loneliness, and life satisfaction). At the end of the survey, participants were asked to upload screenshots of their respective 'Screen Time' (for iOS) or 'Digital Well-being' (for Android) apps, which we used to measure their actual smartphone use. Results: We found a moderate association between self-reported and actual smartphone use (r = .36); on average, participants underreported their daily smartphone use by 11 min. Actual smartphone use was negatively associated with well-being, while self-reported use showed no statistically significant association. FoMO was positively associated with actual smartphone use but not with self-reported use. Finally, FoMO moderated the relationship between self-reported use and well-being. Conclusion: Our findings show that the relationship between smartphone use and well-being depends on how smartphone use is measured and is moderated by FoMO. Moreover, we find that mobile data donation is viable in Pakistan, which should encourage future research to use it as a complement to self-reported media use more often.

Conspiracy believers claim to be free thinkers but (Under)Use advice like everyone else.

Conspiracy believers often claim to be critical thinkers their 'own research' instead of relying on others' testimony. In two preregistered behavioural studies conducted in the United Kingdom and Pakistan (Nparticipants = 864, Ntrials = 5408), we test whether conspiracy believers have a general tendency to discount social information (in favour of their own opinions and intuitions). We found that conspiracy mentality is not associated with social information use in text-based (Study 1) and image-based (Study 2) advice-taking tasks. Yet, we found discrepancies between self-reported and actual social information use. Conspiracy believers were more likely to report relying less on social information than actually relying less on social information in the behavioural tasks. Our results suggest that the scepticism of conspiracy believers towards epistemic authorities is unlikely to be the manifestation of a general tendency to discount social information. Conspiracy believers may be more permeable to social influence than they sometimes claim.

Happy thoughts: The role of communion in accepting and sharing (mis)beliefs.

The negativity bias favours the cultural diffusion of negative beliefs, yet many common (mis)beliefs-naturopathy works, there's a heaven-are positive. Why? People might share 'happy thoughts'-beliefs that might make others happy-to display their kindness. Five experiments conducted among Japanese and English-speaking participants (N = 2412) show that: (i) people higher on communion are more likely to believe and share happier beliefs, by contrast with people higher in competence and dominance; (ii) when they want to appear nice and kind, rather than competent and dominant, people avoid sharing sad beliefs, and instead prefer sharing happy beliefs; (iii) sharing happier beliefs instead of sad beliefs leads to being perceived as nicer and kinder; and (iv) sharing happy beliefs instead of sad beliefs fleads to being perceived as less dominant. Happy beliefs could spread, despite a general negativity bias, because they allow their senders to signal kindness.

Does nuclear energy produce neodymium? Negative perception of nuclear energy drives the assumption that it is polluting.

The public tends to exaggerate the dangers of nuclear energy, mistakenly associating it with various environmental problems such as ozone depletion and the production of CO2. First, we investigate the acquisition of misconceptions about nuclear energy. In Experiments 1 (N = 198, United Kingdom) and 2 (N = 204, France), participants were more likely to develop new negative misconceptions about nuclear energy, compared to renewables or even some fossil fuels. Participants were also more likely to attribute the emission of hazardous substances produced by renewables to nuclear energy than to the energy sources actually emitting it. This suggests that specific misconceptions about nuclear energy are likely the by-products of negative perceptions of nuclear energy. Second, we ask whether correcting specific misconceptions leads to less negative attitudes about nuclear energy. In Experiments 3 (N = 296, United Kingdom.) and 4 (N = 305, France), participants were exposed to pronuclear energy arguments, one of which informed them of its low CO2 emissions. This argument led to a decrease in the perception that nuclear energy contributes to climate change. Thus, even if specific misconceptions about nuclear energy derive from overall negative perceptions, addressing these misconceptions can still help align public opinion with expert opinion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Moralization and extremism robustly amplify myside sharing.

We explored whether moralization and attitude extremity may amplify a preference to share politically congruent ("myside") partisan news and what types of targeted interventions may reduce this tendency. Across 12 online experiments (N = 6,989), we examined decisions to share news touching on the divisive issues of gun control, abortion, gender and racial equality, and immigration. Myside sharing was systematically observed and was consistently amplified when participants (i) moralized and (ii) were attitudinally extreme on the issue. The amplification of myside sharing by moralization also frequently occurred above and beyond that of attitude extremity. These effects generalized to both true and fake partisan news. We then examined a number of interventions meant to curb myside sharing by manipulating (i) the audience to which people imagined sharing partisan news (political friends vs. foes), (ii) the anonymity of the account used (anonymous vs. personal), (iii) a message warning against the myside bias, and (iv) a message warning against the reputational costs of sharing "mysided" fake news coupled with an interactive rating task. While some of those manipulations slightly decreased sharing in general and/or the size of myside sharing, the amplification of myside sharing by moral attitudes was consistently robust to these interventions. Our findings regarding the robust exaggeration of selective communication by morality and extremism offer important insights into belief polarization and the spread of partisan and false information online.

Information delivered by a chatbot has a positive impact on COVID-19 vaccines attitudes and intentions.

The Coronavirus disease; COVID-19 vaccines will not end the pandemic if they stay in freezers. In many countries, such as France, COVID-19 vaccines hesitancy is high. It is crucial that governments make it as easy as possible for people who want to be vaccinated to do so, but also that they devise communication strategies to address the concerns of vaccine hesitant individuals. We introduce and test on 701 French participants a novel messaging strategy: A chatbot that answers people's questions about COVID-19 vaccines. We find that interacting with this chatbot for a few minutes significantly increases people's intentions to get vaccinated (ß = 0.12) and has a positive impact on their attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination (ß = 0.23). Our results suggest that a properly scripted and regularly updated chatbot could offer a powerful resource to help fight hesitancy toward COVID-19 vaccines. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Einstein effect provides global evidence for scientific source credibility effects and the influence of religiosity.

People tend to evaluate information from reliable sources more favourably, but it is unclear exactly how perceivers' worldviews interact with this source credibility effect. In a large and diverse cross-cultural sample (N = 10,195 from 24 countries), we presented participants with obscure, meaningless statements attributed to either a spiritual guru or a scientist. We found a robust global source credibility effect for scientific authorities, which we dub 'the Einstein effect': across all 24 countries and all levels of religiosity, scientists held greater authority than spiritual gurus. In addition, individual religiosity predicted a weaker relative preference for the statement from the scientist compared with the spiritual guru, and was more strongly associated with credibility judgements for the guru than the scientist. Independent data on explicit trust ratings across 143 countries mirrored our experimental findings. These findings suggest that irrespective of one's religious worldview, across cultures science is a powerful and universal heuristic that signals the reliability of information.

Scaling up interactive argumentation by providing counterarguments with a chatbot.

Discussion is more convincing than standard, unidirectional messaging, but its interactive nature makes it difficult to scale up. We created a chatbot to emulate the most important traits of discussion. A simple argument pointing out the existence of a scientific consensus on the safety of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) already led to more positive attitudes towards GMOs, compared with a control message. Providing participants with good arguments rebutting the most common counterarguments against GMOs led to much more positive attitudes towards GMOs, whether the participants could immediately see all the arguments or could select the most relevant arguments in a chatbot. Participants holding the most negative attitudes displayed more attitude change in favour of GMOs. Participants updated their beliefs when presented with good arguments, but we found no evidence that an interactive chatbot proves more persuasive than a list of arguments and counterarguments.

Rationalizations primarily serve reputation management, not decision making.

We agree with Cushman that rationalizations are the product of biological adaptations, but we disagree about their function. The data available do not show that rationalizations allow us to reason better and make better decisions. The data suggest instead that rationalizations serve reputation management goals, and that they affect our behaviors because we are held accountable by our peers.

Framing messages for vaccination supporters.

Efficiently communicating information on vaccination is crucial to maintaining a high level of immunization coverage, but it implies finding the right content for the right audience. Provaccination individuals, who represent the majority of the population, and who have been neglected in the literature, could play an important role relaying provaccination messages through informal discussions, if only these messages are (a) found plausible, (b) remembered, and (c) shared. We conducted 7 experiments on 2,761 provaccination online participants (United States and United Kingdom), testing whether the valence of a statement (positive or negative) and its rhetorical orientation (pro- or antivaccine) affected these 3 steps. Participants deemed more plausible, were more willing to transmit (and actually transmitted more), but did not remember positively framed statements better. Provaccination rhetorical orientation had little or no effect. Overall, the framing effects observed were dramatic: one framing made participants very eager to transmit a statement, while another made them reluctant to transmit it at all. The framing effects also influenced vaccination attitudes, with participants exposed to positively framed statements reporting more positive attitudes toward vaccination. Since messages have to be framed one way or the other, the framing effects demonstrated here should be considered when designing public health messages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The cognitive foundations of misinformation on science: What we know and what scientists can do about it.

Mis information and misunderstanding of science can partially explained by cognitive processes rooted in our evolutionary past. Science communication can use this knowledge to overcome these cognitive limits.

Relevance Is Socially Rewarded, But Not at the Price of Accuracy.

Selecting good sources of information is a critical skill to navigate our highly social world. To evaluate the epistemic reputation of potential sources, the main criterion should be the relevance of the information they provide us. In two online experiments (N = 801), we found that receivers are more thankful toward, deem more competent, and are more likely to request information in the future from sources of more relevant messages-if they know the message to be accurate or deem it plausible. To prevent sources from presenting information as more relevant than it is in order to improve their reputation, receivers lower the reputation of sources sending messages that are more relevant-if-true, if they know the message to be inaccurate. Our research sheds light on the reputational trade-offs involved in choosing what information to communicate and helps explain transmission patterns such as rumors diffusion.

It happened to a friend of a friend: inaccurate source reporting in rumour diffusion.

People often attribute rumours to an individual in a knowledgeable position two steps removed from them (a credible friend of a friend), such as 'my friend's father, who's a cop, told me about a serial killer in town'. Little is known about the influence of such attributions on rumour propagation, or how they are maintained when the rumour is transmitted. In four studies (N = 1824) participants exposed to a rumour and asked to transmit it overwhelmingly attributed it either to a credible friend of a friend, or to a generic friend (e.g. 'a friend told me about a serial killer in town'). In both cases, participants engaged in source shortening: e.g. when told by a friend that 'a friend told me …' they shared the rumour as coming from 'a friend' instead of 'a friend of friend'. Source shortening and reliance on credible sources boosted rumour propagation by increasing the rumours' perceived plausibility and participants' willingness to share them. Models show that, in linear transmission chains, the generic friend attribution dominates, but that allowing each individual to be exposed to the rumour from several sources enables the maintenance of the credible friend of a friend attribution.