Deliberative panels as a source of public knowledge: A large-sample test of the Citizens' Initiative Review.

Evolving US media and political systems, coupled with escalating misinformation campaigns, have left the public divided over objective facts featured in policy debates. The public also has lost much of its confidence in the institutions designed to adjudicate those epistemic debates. To counter this threat, civic entrepreneurs have devised institutional reforms to revitalize democratic policymaking. One promising intervention is the Citizens' Initiative Review (CIR), which has been adopted into law in Oregon and tested in several other states, as well as Switzerland and Finland. Each CIR gathers a demographically stratified random sample of registered voters to form a deliberative panel, which hears from pro and con advocates and neutral experts while assessing the merits of a ballot measure. After four-to-five days of deliberation, each CIR writes an issue guide for voters that identifies key factual findings, along with the most important pro and con arguments. This study pools the results of survey experiments conducted on thirteen CIRs held from 2010 to 2018, resulting in a dataset that includes 67,120 knowledge scores collected from 10,872 registered voters exposed to 82 empirical claims. Analysis shows that reading the CIR guide had a positive effect on voters' policy knowledge, with stronger effects for those holding greater faith in deliberation. We found little evidence of directional motivated reasoning but some evidence that reading the CIR statement can spark an accuracy motivation. Overall, the main results show how trust in peer deliberation provides one path out of the maze of misinformation shaping voter decisions during elections.

How Communicating Misleading Information Dilutes Public Understanding of Weight Loss Mechanisms.

The biomedical literature describes clearly the direct mechanisms influencing weight gain, but broader public discourse on the subject is rife with misleading claims about the factors that cause people to gain or lose weight. We examine how such misleading claims can dilute accurate information to the point that people arrive at poor judgments about the direct causes of weight gain. We adapt the conventional experimental paradigm used in dilution research (Nisbett, Zukier, & Lemley, 1981) to measure the effect of different information levels of dilution. We use a pair of online survey experiments to distinguish the effects of receiving distractingly plausible information versus raw information overload. These experiments also probe the limits of the dilution effect by using a large national sample of participants who vary by their health information efficacy and other potential moderators. Results suggest that public confusion about weight loss may stem from a dilution effect, which remains constant across a wide range of subgroups one might otherwise expect to resist it.

Who fears the HPV vaccine, who doesn't, and why? an experimental study of the mechanisms of cultural cognition.

The cultural cognition thesis holds that individuals form risk perceptions that reflect their commitments to contested views of the good society. We conducted a study that used the dispute over mandatory HPV vaccination to test the cultural cognition thesis. Although public health officials have recommended that all girls aged 11 or 12 be vaccinated for HPV-a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer-political controversy has blocked adoption of mandatory school-enrollment vaccination programs in all but one state. An experimental study of a large sample of American adults (N = 1,538) found that cultural cognition generates disagreement about the risks and benefits of the vaccine through two mechanisms: biased assimilation, and the credibility heuristic. We discuss theoretical and practical implications.

Cultural cognition of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology.

How is public opinion towards nanotechnology likely to evolve? The 'familiarity hypothesis' holds that support for nanotechnology will likely grow as awareness of it expands. The basis of this conjecture is opinion polling, which finds that few members of the public claim to know much about nanotechnology, but that those who say they do are substantially more likely to believe its benefits outweigh its risks. Some researchers, however, have avoided endorsing the familiarity hypothesis, stressing that cognitive heuristics and biases could create anxiety as the public learns more about this novel science. We conducted an experimental study aimed at determining how members of the public would react to balanced information about nanotechnology risks and benefits. Finding no support for the familiarity hypothesis, the study instead yielded strong evidence that public attitudes are likely to be shaped by psychological dynamics associated with cultural cognition.