Self-certification: A novel method for increasing sharing discernment on social media.

The proliferation of misinformation on social media platforms has given rise to growing demands for effective intervention strategies that increase sharing discernment (i.e. increase the difference in the probability of sharing true posts relative to the probability of sharing false posts). One suggested method is to encourage users to deliberate on the veracity of the information prior to sharing. However, this strategy is undermined by individuals' propensity to share posts they acknowledge as false. In our study, across three experiments, in a simulated social media environment, participants were shown social media posts and asked whether they wished to share them and, sometimes, whether they believed the posts to be truthful. We observe that requiring users to verify their belief in a news post's truthfulness before sharing it markedly curtails the dissemination of false information. Thus, requiring self-certification increased sharing discernment. Importantly, requiring self-certification didn't hinder users from sharing content they genuinely believed to be true because participants were allowed to share any posts that they indicated were true. We propose self-certification as a method that substantially curbs the spread of misleading content on social media without infringing upon the principle of free speech.

Attributions for extreme weather events: science and the people.

Both climate scientists and non-scientists (laypeople) attribute extreme weather events to various influences. Laypeople's attributions for these events are important as these attributions likely influence their views and actions about climate change and extreme events. Research has examined laypeople's attribution scepticism about climate change in general; however, few climate scientists are familiar with the processes underpinning laypeople's attributions for individual extreme events. Understanding these lay attributions is important for scientists to communicate their findings to the public. Following a brief summary of the way climate scientists calculate attributions for extreme weather events, we focus on cognitive and motivational processes that underlie laypeople's attributions for specific events. These include a tendency to prefer single-cause rather than multiple-cause explanations, a discounting of whether possible causes covary with extreme events, a preference for sufficient causes over probabilities, applying prevailing causal narratives, and the influence of motivational factors. For climate scientists and communicators who wish to inform the public about the role of climate change in extreme weather events, these patterns suggest several strategies to explain scientists' attributions for these events and enhance public engagement with climate change. These strategies include showing more explicitly that extreme weather events reflect multiple causal influences, that climate change is a mechanism that covaries with these events and increases the probability and intensity of many of these events, that human emissions contributing to climate change are controllable, and that misleading communications about weather attributions reflect motivated interests rather than good evidence.

Enlisting the support of trusted sources to tackle policy problems: The case of antimicrobial resistance.

Antimicrobial resistance represents one of the world's most pressing public health problems. Governments around the world have-and will continue to-develop policy proposals to deal with this problem. However, the capacity of government will be constrained by very low levels of trust in government. This stands in contrast to 'medical scientists' who are highly trusted by the public. This article tests to what extent trusted sources can alter attitudes towards a policy proposal to regulate the use of antibiotics. We find that respondents are much more likely to support a policy put forward by 'medical scientists.' This article provides some initial evidence that medical scientists could be used to gain support for policies to tackle pressing policy challenges such as AMR.

Cross-Cultural Comparison of Self-Construal and Well-Being between Japan and South Korea: The Role of Self-Focused and Other-Focused Relational Selves.

Relational self, along with individual and collective selves, is a fundamental aspect that makes up self-concept. Proposing its two aspects: self-focused relational self (i.e., perceiving the self as the object of other people's referential awareness or intentionality) and other-focused relational self (i.e., perceiving the self as being attuned and empathetically connected to close others), the current study explored the way the four selves affect well-being in Japan and South Korea, the East Asian cultures that have been assumed to be homogeneously collectivistic in previous psychological literature. Japanese and Korean participants rated a set of well-being and self-related scales. There were visible sample differences within culture by collection method (classroom vs. online) in relative degrees of selves and related constructs, possibly associated with generational differences. Other-focused relational self was greater in the Korean classroom sample than the Japanese counterpart, whereas no difference was found between the online samples. On the other hand, it was consistent between cultures that the two types of relational self showed different associations with social anxiety and self-esteem as expected, and that they predicted well-being in different ways. We discuss implications for the generational differences and their interactions with culture and the importance of separating the two aspects of relational self in the study of self and culture.

Empathy, culture and self-humanising: Empathising reduces the attribution of greater humanness to the self more in Japan than Australia.

People tend to ascribe greater humanness to themselves than to others. Previous research has indicated that this "self-humanising" bias is independent of self-enhancement and robust across cultures. The present study examined the possible role of empathy in reducing this bias in Japan (N = 80) and Australia (N = 80). Results showed that unlike Australians, Japanese participants who recalled personal experiences of empathising with others were less likely to self-humanise than those in a neutral condition. The effect of the empathy manipulation was not observed in Australia. The findings suggest that empathy may reduce self-focus and enable perceivers to appreciate the full humanness of others, but this effect may be culturally contingent.

The "saying is repeating" effect: dyadic communication can generate cultural stereotypes.

It has been long established that interpersonal communication underpins the existence of cultural stereotypes. However, research has either examined the formation of new or the maintenance of existing stereotypes. In a series of three studies, the present research bridges the gap between these phases by showing that newly formed stereotypes can spread through repeated dyadic communication with others. The stereotypic representation arose due to the audience tuning in to communication to a first audience. Further transmission to two types of subsequent audiences was simulated: a newcomer and an old-timer with an unknown attitude towards the target. A "saying-is-repeating" effect was obtained: the stereotypic representation was invariably transmitted to the newcomer, regardless of whether communicators personally believed in the bias; perceived group-level consensus moderated its transmission to the old-timer. These findings demonstrate that once a stereotypic representation is formed, it is likely to spread in a community and potentially become a cultural stereotype.