This preregistered study tests a novel psychological intervention to improve news veracity discernment. The main intervention involved inductive learning (IL) training (i.e., practice discriminating between multiple true and fake news exemplars with feedback) with or without gamification. Participants (N = 282 Prolific users) were randomly assigned to either a gamified IL intervention, a nongamified version of the same IL intervention, a no-treatment control group, or a Bad News intervention, a notable web-based game designed to tackle online misinformation. Following the intervention (if applicable), all participants rated the veracity of a novel set of news headlines. We hypothesized that the gamified intervention would be the most effective for improving news veracity discernment, followed by its nongamified equivalent, then Bad News, and finally the control group. The results were analyzed with receiver-operating characteristic curve analyses, which have previously never been applied to news veracity discernment. The analyses indicated that there were no significant differences between conditions and the Bayes factor indicated very strong evidence for the null. This finding raises questions about the effectiveness of current psychological interventions and contradicts prior research that has supported the efficacy of Bad News. Age, gender, and political leaning all predicted news veracity discernment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Two experiments examined the effects of cognitive offloading on a complex prospective memory task. Participants underwent a simulated telehealth examination in which they learned about dry eye disease and its treatment. They were asked to email the experimenter at 7:00 p.m., 2 days later, at which point they attempted to recall the medical information about dry eye. Participants in the offload condition were instructed to set a reminder; participants in the internal condition were not. At 7:15 p.m., all participants received an email requesting them to complete the free-recall test, allowing for an assessment of memory performance even when participants failed to email the experimenter. Participants in the offload condition significantly outperformed participants in the internal condition, both in terms of emailing the experimenter on time and in terms of completing the second phase of the experiment at all. No differences were observed regarding performance on the memory test. Results related to rehearsals, metacognitive judgments, and conscientiousness are also reported. Overall, the study provides new insight into how reminders can affect performance on a complex prospective memory task and how reminders may have the potential to be used in medical contexts to optimize patient outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Many opponents of genetically engineered (GE) food say that it ought to be prohibited regardless of the risks and benefits (Scott et al., 2016). If many people are truly unwilling to consider risks and benefits in evaluating GE technology, this poses serious problems for scientists and policymakers. In a large demographically-representative German sample (N = 3,025), we investigate consequence-insensitive beliefs about GE crops among GE supporters and opponents, as well as whether these beliefs can be mitigated. We find that a large majority of opponents and a substantial minority of supporters are consequence-insensitive: They say that risks and benefits are irrelevant to their views. At the same time, the responses of consequence-insensitive participants to subsequent belief probes show substantial flexibility. Participants often gave responses inconsistent with the unconditional prohibition or permission of GE crops. These results suggest that professed consequence insensitivity should be taken as an expression of a strong moral belief rather than as literal endorsement of policy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
The present research documents a cure effect, whereby individuals are more likely to demand affordable prices when health treatments (e.g., drugs, medications, therapies) claim to eliminate (vs. reduce) disease symptoms. This preference for low-priced "cures" contradicts the fundamental premise of value-based pricing, which would expect individuals to tolerate higher prices for cures because they are putatively more effective and therefore more valuable. Five studies with over 2,500 participants provide robust evidence for the cure effect and show that it occurs because individuals judge a health treatment's acceptable price by focusing predominantly on its communal value rather than its market value. Given that cures are associated with maximal effectiveness, they are disproportionately endowed with communal value and more likely to yield price judgments that reflect concerns about universal access. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
Tillman et al. (2017) used evidence-accumulation modeling to ascertain the effects of a conversation (either with a passenger or on a hands-free cell phone) on a drivers' mental workload. They found that a concurrent conversation increased the response threshold but did not alter the rate of evidence accumulation. However, this earlier research collapsed across speaking and listening components of a natural conversation, potentially masking any dynamic fluctuations associated with this dual-task combination. In the present study, a unique implementation of the detection response task was used to simultaneously measure the demands on the driver and the nondriver when they were speaking or when they were listening. We found that the natural ebb and flow of a conversation altered both the rate of evidence accumulation and the response threshold for drivers and nondrivers alike. The dynamic fluctuations in cognitive workload observed with this novel method illustrate how quickly the parameters of cognition are altered by real-time task demands. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to compose music is becoming mainstream. Yet, there is a concern that listeners may have biases against AIs. Here, we test the hypothesis that listeners will like music less if they think it was composed by an AI. In Study 1, participants listened to excerpts of electronic and classical music and rated how much they liked the excerpts and whether they thought they were composed by an AI or human. Participants were more likely to attribute an AI composer to electronic music and liked music less that they thought was composed by an AI. In Study 2, we directly manipulated composer identity by telling participants that the music they heard (electronic music) was composed by an AI or by a human, yet we found no effect of composer identity on liking. We hypothesized that this was due to the "AI-sounding" nature of electronic music. Therefore, in Study 3, we used a set of "human-sounding" classical music excerpts. Here, participants liked the music less when it was purportedly composed by an AI. We conclude with implications of the AI composer bias for understanding perception of AIs in arts and aesthetic processing theories more broadly. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).