The illusory truth effect leads to the spread of misinformation

Social Media and Nutritional Guidelines in Pregnancy

INTRODUCTION

Nutrition impacts health outcomes of pregnant people and their fetuses. Discussing nutrition with patients may be challenging for health care providers. In this vacuum, patients use social media for health information during pregnancy. Little is known about the type and quality of nutrition information that is available on social media. The aim of this study was to qualitatively explore the pregnancy nutrition messages contained in social media videos for content and evaluate the information's concordance with evidence-based guidelines.

METHODS

A review of current social media video content for nutrition in pregnancy was conducted across 4 platforms: YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Content analysis was used to descriptively and categorically analyze the social media video content.

RESULTS

In the 62 social media videos reviewed, most were not consistent with established guidelines, were inaccurate, or presented a homogenous and unrealistic image of the pregnant person. Four categories of nutrition in pregnancy social media information emerged: what to eat, what not to eat, what I ate: aspirational, and what I ate: rebellion. Few videos were produced by health care organizations. Some were produced by anonymous organizations, with the majority made by pregnant or postpartum people. Many were testimonial or confessional in style. Despite regulations requiring identification of paid posts and advertisements, it was difficult to discern if videos were authentic sharing of patient experiences or advertisements.

DISCUSSION

There is incorrect and incomplete information on social media surrounding nutrition in pregnancy. Professional guidelines for nutrition in pregnancy are available but are not as accessible to patients as social media videos. Social media use is associated with disordered eating and increased risk of anxiety and depression. However, targeted interventions by health care providers that use social media platforms have been successful in the distribution of credible health information. Midwives and other health care providers should share evidence-based nutrition recommendation with patients to facilitate meaningful conversations around nutrition in pregnancy during in person and online interactions.

The illusory truth effect: A review of how repetition increases belief in misinformation

Repetition increases belief in information, a phenomenon known as the illusory truth effect. In laboratory experiments, the illusory truth effect has often been examined using general trivia statements as stimuli, but repetition also increases belief in misinformation, such as fake news headlines and conspiracy beliefs. Repetition even increases belief in claims that are implausible or that contradict prior knowledge. Repetition also has broader impacts beyond belief, such as increasing sharing intentions of news headlines and decreasing how unethical an act is perceived to be. Although the illusory truth effect is robust, some interventions reduce its magnitude, including instruction to focus on accuracy and awareness of the illusory truth effect. These strategies may be effective for reducing belief in misinformation.

Updating the identity-based model of belief: From false belief to the spread of misinformation

The spread of misinformation threatens democratic societies, hampering informed decision-making. Partisan identity biases perceptions of reality, promoting false beliefs. The Identity-based Model of Political Belief explains how social identity shapes information processing and contributes to misinformation. According to this model, social identity goals can override accuracy goals, leading to belief alignment with party members rather than facts. We propose an extended version of this model that incorporates the role of informational context in misinformation belief and sharing. Partisanship involves cognitive and motivational aspects that shape party members' beliefs and actions. This includes whether they seek further evidence, where they seek that evidence, and which sources they trust. Understanding the interplay between social identity and accuracy is crucial in addressing misinformation.

Belief-consistent information is most shared despite being the least surprising

In the classical information theoretic framework, information "value" is proportional to how novel/surprising the information is. Recent work building on such notions claimed that false news spreads faster than truth online because false news is more novel and therefore surprising. However, another determinant of surprise, semantic meaning (e.g., information's consistency or inconsistency with prior beliefs), should also influence value and sharing. Examining sharing behavior on Twitter, we observed separate relations of novelty and belief consistency with sharing. Though surprise could not be assessed in those studies, belief consistency should relate to less surprise, suggesting the relevance of semantic meaning beyond novelty. In two controlled experiments, belief-consistent (vs. belief-inconsistent) information was shared more despite consistent information being the least surprising. Manipulated novelty did not predict sharing or surprise. Thus, classical information theoretic predictions regarding perceived value and sharing would benefit from considering semantic meaning in contexts where people hold pre-existing beliefs.

How persuasive is AI-generated propaganda?

Can large language models, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), generate persuasive propaganda? We conducted a preregistered survey experiment of US respondents to investigate the persuasiveness of news articles written by foreign propagandists compared to content generated by GPT-3 davinci (a large language model). We found that GPT-3 can create highly persuasive text as measured by participants' agreement with propaganda theses. We further investigated whether a person fluent in English could improve propaganda persuasiveness. Editing the prompt fed to GPT-3 and/or curating GPT-3's output made GPT-3 even more persuasive, and, under certain conditions, as persuasive as the original propaganda. Our findings suggest that propagandists could use AI to create convincing content with limited effort.

The relevance of syntactic complexity for truth judgments: A registered report

Fluency theories predict higher truth judgments for easily processed statements. We investigated two factors relevant for processing fluency: repetition and syntactic complexity. In three online experiments, we manipulated syntactic complexity by creating simple and complex versions of trivia statements. Experiments 1 and 2 replicated the repetition-based truth effect. However, syntactic complexity did not affect truth judgments although complex statements were processed slower than simple statements. This null effect is surprising given that both studies had high statistical power and varied in the relative salience of syntactic complexity. Experiment 3 provides a preregistered test of the discounting explanation by using improved trivia statements of equal length and by manipulating the salience of complexity in a randomized design. As predicted by fluency theories, simple statements were more likely judged as true than complex ones, while this effect was small and not moderated by the salience of complexity.

People underestimate the influence of repetition on truth judgments (and more so for themselves than for others)

People judge repeated statements as more truthful than new statements: a truth effect. In three pre-registered experiments (N = 463), we examined whether people expect repetition to influence truth judgments more for others than for themselves: a bias blind spot in the truth effect. In Experiments 1 and 2, using moderately plausible and implausible statements, respectively, the test for the bias blind spot did not pass the significance threshold set for a two-step sequential analysis. Experiment 3 considered moderately plausible statements but with a larger sample of participants. Additionally, it compared actual performance after a two-day delay with participants' predictions for themselves and others. This time, we found clear evidence for a bias blind spot in the truth effect. Experiment 3 also showed that participants underestimated the magnitude of the truth effect, especially so for themselves, and that predictions and actual truth effect scores were not significantly related. Finally, an integrative analysis focusing on a more conservative between-participant approach found clear frequentist and Bayesian evidence for a bias blind spot. Overall, the results indicate that people (1) hold beliefs about the effect of repetition on truth judgments, (2) believe that this effect is larger for others than for themselves, (3) and underestimate the effect's magnitude, and (4) particularly so for themselves.

The illusory truth effect requires semantic coherence across repetitions

Repeated exposure to information increases its' perceived truth, and this illusory truth effect is often explained by two theoretical frameworks: the fluency account and the referential theory of truth. Whereas the fluency account suggests that prior activation of a single referent within a statement should increase its perceived truth, the referential theory makes no such predictions. The referential theory instead proposes that when a statement is processed, it activates the corresponding memory referents within that statement and strengthens the connection between these referents in the semantic memory network. Because repeated statements will have more coherent corresponding referents than new statements, they are perceived as relatively truer. Experiments 1 and 2 focused on testing the fluency account, with participants exposed to one or two of a statement's referents before evaluating that statement's truth. Experiments 3 and 4 focused on the referential theory by exposing participants to non-critical facts that linked together two of a critical statements' referents before evaluating the truth of the critical statements. We consistently observed a standard illusory truth effect, such that facts that repeated verbatim were rated as truer than new facts. However, perceived truth was not affected by prior exposure to the critical statement's topic (Experiment 1) or by prior exposure to non-critical facts related to the same topic(s) as the critical statement (Experiment 2). There was also no boost in perceived truth following prior exposure to non-critical facts that linked together two of the primary referents of the critical statement but did so in a semantically distinct manner from how those same referents were linked in the critical statement itself (Experiments 3 and 4). However, Experiment 4 demonstrated that perceived truth significantly increased if there was prior exposure to non-critical facts that linked two of the critical statement primary referents in a way that was semantically coherent with how those same referents were linked within the critical statement. Together, these results are consistent with the referential theory, and suggest that semantic consistency across repetitions plays a crucial role in leading to repetition-based illusory truth effects.

The Influence of News Consumption Habits and Dispositional Traits on Trust in Medical Scientists

Public trust in medical institutions is essential for ensuring compliance with medical directives. However, the politicization of public health issues and the polarized nature of major news outlets suggest that partisanship and news consumption habits can influence medical trust. This study employed a survey with 858 participants and used regression analysis to assesses how news consumption habits and information assessment traits (IATs) influence trust in medical scientists. IATs included were conscientiousness, openness, need for cognitive closure (NFCC), and cognitive reflective thinking (CRT). News sources were classified on the basis of factuality and political bias. Initially, readership of liberally biased news was positively associated with medical trust (p < 0.05). However, this association disappeared when controlling for the news source's factuality (p = 0.28), while CRT (p < 0.05) was positively associated with medical trust. When controlling for conservatively biased news sources, factuality of the news source (p < 0.05) and NFCC (p < 0.05) were positively associated with medical trust. While partisan media bias may influence medical trust, these results suggest that those who have higher abilities to assess information and who prefer more credible news sources have a greater trust in medical scientists.