Believing that Humans Swallow Spiders in Their Sleep

Analysis of Fluoride-Free Content on Twitter: Topic Modeling Study

BACKGROUND

Although social media has the potential to spread misinformation, it can also be a valuable tool for elucidating the social factors that contribute to the onset of negative beliefs. As a result, data mining has become a widely used technique in infodemiology and infoveillance research to combat misinformation effects. On the other hand, there is a lack of studies that specifically aim to investigate misinformation about fluoride on Twitter. Web-based individual concerns on the side effects of fluoridated oral care products and tap water stimulate the emergence and propagation of convictions that boost antifluoridation activism. In this sense, a previous content analysis-driven study demonstrated that the term fluoride-free was frequently associated with antifluoridation interests.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to analyze "fluoride-free" tweets regarding their topics and frequency of publication over time.

METHODS

A total of 21,169 tweets published in English between May 2016 and May 2022 that included the keyword "fluoride-free" were retrieved by the Twitter application programming interface. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling was applied to identify the salient terms and topics. The similarity between topics was calculated through an intertopic distance map. Moreover, an investigator manually assessed a sample of tweets depicting each of the most representative word groups that determined specific issues. Lastly, additional data visualization was performed regarding the total count of each topic of fluoride-free record and its relevance over time, using Elastic Stack software.

RESULTS

We identified 3 issues by applying the LDA topic modeling: "healthy lifestyle" (topic 1), "consumption of natural/organic oral care products" (topic 2), and "recommendations for using fluoride-free products/measures" (topic 3). Topic 1 was related to users' concerns about leading a healthier lifestyle and the potential impacts of fluoride consumption, including its hypothetical toxicity. Complementarily, topic 2 was associated with users' personal interests and perceptions of consuming natural and organic fluoride-free oral care products, whereas topic 3 was linked to users' recommendations for using fluoride-free products (eg, switching from fluoridated toothpaste to fluoride-free alternatives) and measures (eg, consuming unfluoridated bottled water instead of fluoridated tap water), comprising the propaganda of dental products. Additionally, the count of tweets on fluoride-free content decreased between 2016 and 2019 but increased again from 2020 onward.

CONCLUSIONS

Public concerns toward a healthy lifestyle, including the adoption of natural and organic cosmetics, seem to be the main motivation of the recent increase of "fluoride-free" tweets, which can be boosted by the propagation of fluoride falsehoods on the web. Therefore, public health authorities, health professionals, and legislators should be aware of the spread of fluoride-free content on social media to create and implement strategies against their potential health damage for the population.

Generalization and false memory in acquired equivalence

Memory allows us to remember specific events but also combine information across events to infer new information. New inferences are thought to stem from integrating memories of related events during encoding but can be also generated on-demand, based on separate memories of individual events. Integrative encoding has been argued as dominant in the acquired equivalence paradigm, where people have a tendency to assume that when two faces share one preference, they also share another. A downside may be a loss of source memory, where inferred preferences are mistaken for observed ones. Here, we tested these predictions of the integrative encoding hypothesis across five datasets collected using variations of the acquired equivalence paradigm. Results showed a statistically reliable but numerically small tendency to generalize preferences across faces, with stronger evidence for on-demand inferences at retrieval rather than spontaneous integration during encoding. A newly included explicit source memory test showed that participants differentiated learned from inferred preferences to a high degree, irrespective of whether they generalized preferences across faces. False memory was however increased in participants who made generalization decisions faster, which could be consistent with integrative encoding and/or source monitoring frameworks. The results suggest that generalization in acquired equivalence may result from integrated representations that facilitate new inferences at the expense of source memory, but also demonstrate that on-demand retrieval-based processes may play a larger role in this paradigm than previously thought. Finally, the results indicate that reaction times may be more sensitive than performance as a means to assess representations underlying behavior. More broadly, the study informs current theories of generalization and knowledge representation and provides new insights into how memory biases decisions.

Where do pre-service teachers' educational psychological misconceptions come from?

Abstract. Previous research has found a high prevalence of some (educational) psychological misconceptions (i.e., incorrect but often popular assumptions that contradict results from psychological research) among (pre-service) teachers. However, the number of topics that have been investigated is limited. Additionally, knowing the sources of misconceptions might be helpful for rebutting them. Furthermore, anecdotal evidence has been found to be important for informing (pre-service) teachers' practice, but personal experiences also are among the main sources of misconceptions. Therefore, we hypothesized that pre-service teachers would predominantly view sources of anecdotal evidence as the origin of their educational psychological beliefs in general and the main source of their misconceptions in particular. In an online survey (with correlational and quasi-experimental elements) of N = 836 pre-service teachers, we found that educational psychological misconceptions were less prevalent than expected but that pre-service teachers indeed mainly based their beliefs on sources of anecdotal evidence (personal experiences and narratives from other people) and that these nonscientific sources turned out to be the main sources of their misconceptions (comparison with scientific sources: d = 0.19 and d = 0.23). Furthermore, referring more to sources of anecdotal than scientific evidence (research and lectures) was associated with undesirable aspects, that is, more misconceptions ( d = 0.21) and less reduction of misconception endorsement through empirical refutation-style information ( d = 0.30) but not with a lower judgment of the view that it is possible to examine educational psychological topics scientifically. In sum, our results indicate that basing one's beliefs more on sources of anecdotal than scientific evidence is associated with outcomes that stand in contrast to evidence-based education. Future research should investigate why pre-service teachers concentrate on sources of anecdotal evidence, how to make sources of scientific evidence more tempting, and whether counteracting misconceptions by showing the downside of nonscientific sources is effective.

Can’t We Just Disregard Fake News? The Consequences of Exposure to Inaccurate Information

People routinely encounter inaccurate information, from fake news designed to confuse audiences, to communications with inadvertent mistakes, to stories made up to entertain readers. The hope is that these inaccuracies can be easily ignored, exerting little influence on our thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, being exposed to inaccuracies leads to problematic consequences. After reading inaccurate statements, readers exhibit clear effects of those contents on their decisions and problem-solving. This occurs even when readers possess appropriate prior knowledge to evaluate and reject the inaccuracies. Exposure to inaccurate information leads to confusion about what is true, doubt about accurate understandings, and subsequent reliance on falsehoods. Interventions and technologies designed to address these effects by encouraging critical evaluation can support effective comprehension and learning.

Social Transmission of False Memory in Small Groups and Large Networks

Sharing information and memories is a key feature of social interactions, making social contexts important for developing and transmitting accurate memories and also false memories. False memory transmission can have wide-ranging effects, including shaping personal memories of individuals as well as collective memories of a network of people. This paper reviews a collection of key findings and explanations in cognitive research on the transmission of false memories in small groups. It also reviews the emerging experimental work on larger networks and collective false memories. Given the reconstructive nature of memory, the abundance of misinformation in everyday life, and the variety of social structures in which people interact, an understanding of transmission of false memories has both scientific and societal implications.

Hypocognition: Making Sense of the Landscape beyond One's Conceptual Reach

People think, feel, and behave within the confines of what they can conceive. Outside that conceptual landscape, people exhibit hypocognition (i.e., lacking cognitive or linguistic representations of concepts to describe ideas or explicate experiences). We review research on the implications of hypocognition for cognition and behavior. Drawing on the expertise and cross-cultural literatures, we describe how hypocognition impoverishes one's mental world, leaving cognitive deficits in recognition, explanation, and memory while fueling social chauvinism and conflict in political and cultural spheres. Despite its pervasive consequences, people cannot be expected to identify when they are in a hypocognitive state, mistaking what they conceive for the totality of all that there is. To the extent that their channel of knowledge becomes too narrow, people risk submitting to hypocognition's counterpart, hypercognition (i.e., the mistaken overapplication of other available conceptual notions to issues outside their actual relevance).

The Consequences of Reading Inaccurate Information

We are regularly confronted with statements that are inaccurate, sometimes obviously so. Unfortunately, people can be influenced by and rely upon inaccurate information, engaging in less critical evaluation than might be hoped. Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that even when people should know better, reading inaccurate information can affect their performance on subsequent tasks. What encourages people’s encoding and use of false statements? The current article outlines how reliance on inaccurate information is a predictable consequence of the routine cognitive processes associated with memory, problem solving, and comprehension. This view helps identify conditions under which inaccurate information is more or less likely to influence subsequent decisions. These conditions are informative in the consideration of information-design approaches and instructional methods intended to support critical thinking.