Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation.

The powerful allure of social media platforms has been attributed to the human need for social rewards. Here, we demonstrate that the spread of misinformation on such platforms is facilitated by existing social 'carrots' (e.g., 'likes') and 'sticks' (e.g., 'dislikes') that are dissociated from the veracity of the information shared. Testing 951 participants over six experiments, we show that a slight change to the incentive structure of social media platforms, such that social rewards and punishments are contingent on information veracity, produces a considerable increase in the discernment of shared information. Namely, an increase in the proportion of true information shared relative to the proportion of false information shared. Computational modeling (i.e., drift-diffusion models) revealed the underlying mechanism of this effect is associated with an increase in the weight participants assign to evidence consistent with discerning behavior. The results offer evidence for an intervention that could be adopted to reduce misinformation spread, which in turn could reduce violence, vaccine hesitancy and political polarization, without reducing engagement.

In recent years, the amount of untrue information, or 'misinformation', shared online has increased rapidly. This can have profound effects on society and has been linked to violence, political extremism, and resistance to climate action. One reason for the spread of misinformation is the lack of incentives for users to share true content and avoid sharing false content. People tend to select actions that they believe will lead to positive feedback ('carrots') and try to avoid actions that lead to negative feedback ('sticks'). On most social media sites, these carrots and sticks come in the form of 'like' and 'dislike' reactions, respectively. Stories that users think will attract 'likes' are most likely to be shared with other users. However, because the number of likes a post receives is not representative of how accurate it is, users share information even if they suspect it may not be accurate. As a result, misinformation can spread rapidly. Measures aimed at slowing the spread of misinformation have been introduced to some social media sites, such as removing a few virulent spreaders of falsities and flagging misleading content. However, measures that change the incentive structure of sites so that positive and negative feedback is based on the trustworthiness of the information have not yet been explored. To test this approach, Globig et al. set up a simulated social media site that included 'trust' and 'distrust' buttons, as well as the usual 'like' and 'dislike' options. The site featured up to one hundred news stories, half of which were untrue. More than 900 participants viewed the news posts and could react using the new buttons as well as repost the stories. The experiment showed that participants used the 'trust' and 'distrust' buttons to differentiate between true and false posts more than the other options. As a result, to receive more 'trust' responses and less 'distrust' responses from other users, participants were more likely to repost true stories than false ones. This led to a large reduction in the amount of misinformation being spread. Computational modeling revealed that the participants were paying more attention to how reliable a news story appeared to be when deciding whether to repost it. Globig et al. showed that adding buttons to highlight the trustworthiness of posts on social media sites reduces the spread of misinformation, without reducing user engagement. This measure could be easily incorporated into existing social media sites and could have a positive impact on issues that are often fuelled by misinformation, such as vaccine hesitancy and resistance to climate action.

The path of dishonesty: identification of mental processes with electrical neuroimaging.

Much research finds that lying takes longer than truth-telling. Yet, the source of this response time difference remains elusive. Here, we assessed the spatiotemporal evolution of electrical brain activity during honesty and dishonesty in 150 participants using a sophisticated electrical neuroimaging approach-the microstate approach. This uniquely positioned us to identify and contrast the entire chain of mental processes involved during honesty and dishonesty. Specifically, we find that the response time difference is the result of an additional late-occurring mental process, unique to dishonest decisions, interrupting the antecedent mental processing. We suggest that this process inhibits the activation of the truth, thus permitting the execution of the lie. These results advance our understanding of dishonesty and clarify existing theories about the role of increased cognitive load. More broadly, we demonstrate the vast potential of our approach to illuminate the temporal organization of mental processes involved in decision-making.

Reinstating location improves mnemonic access but not fidelity of visual mental representations.

In a virtual reality environment combined with a continuous delayed estimation paradigm, we investigated how manipulation of location at recall (i.e., corresponding vs. non-corresponding to the location where the object was previously encoded) affected mnemonic access and mnemonic fidelity of color information in 100 participants with a within-subjects design. We predicted that the reinstatement of location during recall would improve mnemonic access and mnemonic fidelity. The results suggest that congruent location enhances color access. However, congruent location seems to play no role, or a small role not yet identified in enhancing the details of visual mental representations (weak evidence for the null hypothesis). Explorative analyses revealed that self-reported object imagery preferences modulate the effect of location manipulation on mnemonic access. Overall, the results support the conceptualization of spatial information as a basic feature to help access visual mental representations. Taken together, these findings are in line with the scaffolding hypothesis of visual mental imagery.

Anxiety increases information-seeking in response to large changes.

Seeking information when anxious may help reduce the aversive feeling of uncertainty and guide decision-making. If information is negative or confusing, however, this may increase anxiety further. Information gathered under anxiety can thus be beneficial and/or damaging. Here, we examine whether anxiety leads to a general increase in information-seeking, or rather to changes in the type of information and/or situations in which it is sought. In two controlled laboratory studies, we show that both trait anxiety and induced anxiety lead to a selective alteration in information-seeking. In particular, anxiety did not enhance the general tendency to seek information, nor did it alter the valence of the information gathered. Rather, anxiety amplified the tendency to seek information more in response to large changes in the environment. This was true even when the cause of the anxiety was not directly related to the information sought. As anxious individuals have been shown to have problems learning in changing environments, greater information-seeking in such environments may be an adaptive compensatory mechanism.

Perceptions of personal and public risk: Dissociable effects on behavior and well-being.

When faced with a global threat peoples' perception of risk guides their response. When danger is to the self as well as to others two risk estimates are generated-to the self and to others. Here, we set out to examine how people's perceptions of health risk to the self and others are related to their psychological well-being and behavioral response. To that end, we surveyed a large representative sample of Americans facing the COVID-19 pandemic at two times (N1 = 1145, N2 = 683). We found that people perceived their own risk to be relatively low, while estimating the risk to others as relatively high. These risk estimates were differentially associated with psychological well-being and behavior. In particular, perceived personal but not public risk was associated with people's happiness, while both were predictive of anxiety. In contrast, the tendency to engage in protective behaviors were predicted by peoples' estimated risk to the population, but not to themselves. This raises the possibility that people were predominantly engaging in protective behaviors for the benefit of others. The findings can inform public policy aimed at protecting people's psychological well-being and physical health during global threats. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11166-022-09373-0.

Under Threat, Weaker Evidence Is Required to Reach Undesirable Conclusions.

Critical decisions, such as in domains ranging from medicine to finance, are often made under threatening circumstances that elicit stress and anxiety. The negative effects of such reactions on learning and decision-making have been repeatedly underscored. In contrast, here we show that perceived threat alters the process by which evidence is accumulated in a way that may be adaptive. Participants (n = 91) completed a sequential evidence sampling task in which they were incentivized to accurately judge whether they were in a desirable state, which was associated with greater rewards than losses, or an undesirable state, which was associated with greater losses than rewards. Before the task participants in the "threat group" experienced a social-threat manipulation. Results show that perceived threat led to a reduction in the strength of evidence required to reach an undesirable judgment. Computational modeling revealed this was because of an increase in the relative rate by which negative information was accumulated. The effect of the threat manipulation was global, as the alteration to evidence accumulation was observed for information which was not directly related to the cause of the threat. Requiring weaker evidence to reach undesirable conclusions in threatening environments may be adaptive as it can lead to increased precautionary action.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT To make good judgments, people gather information. As information is often unlimited, a decision has to be made as to when the data are sufficiently strong to reach a conclusion. Here, we show that this decision is significantly influenced by perceived threat. In particular, under threat, the rate of negative information accumulation increased, such that weaker evidence was required to reach an undesirable conclusion. Such modulation could be adaptive as it can result in enhanced cautious behavior in dangerous environments.

Vertical Head Movements Influence Memory Performance for Words With Emotional Content.

Numerous studies have found an association between valence and the vertical dimension of space (good-up, bad-down). This association has also been linked to sensorimotor experiences (e.g., body movements). In this study, we investigated whether body movements along the vertical plane play an active role in the retrieval of positive and negative words (as well as words with a more explicit association with up and down). Twenty-five participants were presented with a list of nouns associated with space (e.g., satellite, underground) and a list of nouns associated with emotions (e.g., joy, war). Subsequently, they had to retrieve the words while performing vertical head movements. We found a vertical effect in that participants retrieved more positive words when moving their head upward and more negative words when moving the head downward. These results illustrate that overt body movements are indeed associated with emotional information and can thereby influence what we remember. We conclude that abstract concepts such as emotional representations are inherently linked to motor action and are grounded in space.