Endorsing Negative Intergroup Attitudes to Justify Failure To Confront Prejudice

While most people believe they would speak up against prejudice, many fail to do so. We identify a harmful consequence of such inaction through examining its impact on bystanders’ own prejudice. Across four studies in two countries (N=1003), using a behavioral paradigm and experimental pretest-posttest design, participants witnessed prejudice and discrimination against an outgroup minority (Jewish/Roma in Hungary, Muslim/Latinx in US). Drawing on self-justification theories, we predicted and found across studies 1-3, that those who had an opportunity but did not confront, endorsed more negative intergroup attitudes following the incident both compared to their own prior attitudes and to control groups, i.e., those who witnessed the same prejudice but had no opportunity to confront, and those who did not to confront different (non-intergroup) prejudice. In study 4, the proposed effect occurred only among those who initially valued confronting. We suggest that failure to speak up amplifies prejudice in society.

Do Climate Change Consensus Messages Cause Reactance? A Comment on Chinn and Hart (2021)

Chinn and Hart (2021) conclude that communicating the scientific consensus on climate change causes psychological reactance. Here we identify several issues that cast doubt on these findings. First and foremost, the authors replicate the finding from van der Linden, Maibach, et al. (2019) that consensus messages do not increase perceptions of manipulation relative to control, neither in general nor amongst partisans. The authors also fail to replicate the three-way interaction from Ma et al. (2019) between the consensus message, partisanship, and prior attitudes. The significant reactance findings only appear for the post-only condition, and the effect size of the partisan interaction appears minimal. Moreover, as no other dependent measures were reported, it remains unclear whether respondents still updated their beliefs despite any reactance. In light of these issues and the elusive nature of backfire effects more generally, we strongly caution against the conclusion that scientific consensus messages cause psychological reactance.

Communicating risk in human-wildlife interactions: How stories and images move minds

Effectively communicating risk is critical to reducing conflict in human-wildlife interactions. Using a survey experiment fielded in the midst of contentious public debate over flying fox management in urban and suburban areas of Australia, we find that stories with characters (i.e., narratives) are more effective than descriptive information at mobilizing support for different forms of bat management, including legal protection, relocation, and habitat restoration. We use conditional process analysis to show that narratives, particularly with accompanying images, are effective because they cause emotional reactions that influence risk perception, which in turn drives public opinion about strategies for risk mitigation. We find that prior attitudes towards bats matter in how narrative messages are received, in particular in how strongly they generate shifts in affective response, risk perception, and public opinion. Our results suggest that those with warm prior attitudes towards bats report greater support for bat dispersal when they perceive impacts from bats to be more likely, while those with cool priors report greater support for bat protection when they perceive impacts from bats to be more positive, revealing 1) potential opportunities for targeted messaging to boost public buy-in of proposals to manage risks associated with human-wildlife interactions, and 2) potential vulnerabilities to disinformation regarding risk.

The Afterlife of the Laws of Hammurabi

The tradition of law collections continued outside of Mesopotamia for more than a millennium after Hammurabi. The Laws of Hammurabi was the culmination of this tradition in Mesopotamia, but this tradition of statutes composed on a repertoire of traditional cases continued in the Hittite Laws and biblical law, even though the royal inscription format was no longer used. The Laws of Hammurabi and Mesopotamian law may have influenced ancient Greek and Roman law. The Laws of Hammurabi is also a witness to the start of another stream of tradition. As this chapter discusses, it became a classic text, and no other law collection was copied so often and for so long. The Laws of Hammurabi served as the subject of formal commentaries. The rise of classic texts and formal commentaries signaled a profound cultural shift. Scribes related to the Laws of Hammurabi in ways that diverged from prior attitudes: it was no longer an improvisation on traditional cases frozen momentarily in written form but became an object of study. The Laws of Hammurabi became the object of commentary, a genre that names itself as dependent on another text: one text is elevated above another, and that text’s obscurities and contradictions are affirmed and explained.

Recognizing and Trusting Persuasion Agents: Attitudes Bias Trustworthiness Judgments, but not Persuasion Detection

People rely on intuitive knowledge about persuasion to cope with persuasion attempts motivated by self-interest. Because this knowledge associates persuasive intent with low trustworthiness, identifying the communicator as an agent with ulterior motives tends to reduce trust in the communicator. Three studies suggest that the extent to which people call on this association to assess a persuasion agent depends on whether the agent’s message challenges or reinforces their prior attitudes. Challenged attitudes motivate people to use the negative association between persuasive intent and trustworthiness, whereas reinforced attitudes lead people to neglect it. However, prior attitudes do not affect people’s capacity to detect cues of ulterior motives and develop an awareness of the persuasive intent. Thus, recipients of persuasive messages that support their prior beliefs trust persuasion agents despite being aware of the agents’ ulterior motives. This seems to be a byproduct of people’s motivation to preserve a sense of self-integrity.

Distributing Computing Devices in Classrooms: Hedonic and Utilitarian Influences on Science and Technology Attitudes

While extensive efforts have been made to harness benefit of computing technologies in education, little attention focuses on how such efforts lead to students’ positive attitudes toward science and technology. Building on the technology acceptance model and motivation literature, the current study proposed that hands-on experiences with computing devices allow students to perceive their technology use as being useful and enjoyable, which in turn leads to positive attitudes toward science and technology in general. Data collected from a pedagogical intervention support our predictions regarding the role of utility perception and enjoyment. Furthermore, it is suggested that students’ prior attitudes toward science and technology and the type of device used in the intervention influence perceived usefulness and enjoyment of classroom computing. When using education-specific devices, students’ prior attitudes were positively associated with postintervention attitudes as well as with utility perception and enjoyment. When using general-purpose devices, however, students’ prior attitudes were not related to those outcomes. These results imply that distribution of technologies to schools may improve attitudes toward science and technology, particularly in populations that have been underrepresented in the fields of science and technology thus far.

Attacking science on social media: How user comments affect perceived trustworthiness and credibility

The science on controversial topics is often heatedly discussed on social media, a potential problem for social-media-based science communicators. Therefore, two exploratory studies were performed to investigate the effects of science-critical user comments attacking Facebook posts containing scientific claims. The claims were about one of four controversial topics (homeopathy, genetically modified organisms, refugee crime, and childhood vaccinations). The user comments attacked the claims based on the thematic complexity, the employed research methods, the expertise, or the motivations of the researchers. The results reveal that prior attitudes determine judgments about the user comments, the attacked claims, and the source of the claim. After controlling for attitude, people agree most with thematic complexity comments, but the comments differ in their effect on perceived claim credibility only when the comments are made by experts. In addition, comments attacking researchers’ motivations were more effective in lowering perceived integrity while scientists’ perceived expertise remained unaffected.

Processing Style and Responsiveness to Corrective Information

The limited influence of corrective messages is one of the most striking observations in the misperceptions literature. We elaborate on this well-known outcome, showing that correction effectiveness varies according to recipients’ judgment strategy. Using data from two online experiments, we demonstrate that individuals’ responses to corrective messages are less biased by prior attitudes when they engage in on-line rather than memory-based processing. We also show that individuals are more responsive to one-sided messages under conditions of on-line rather than memory-based processing. Unexpectedly, two-sided messages, which repeat the inaccuracy before correcting it, performed better than one-sided messages among individuals using memory-based processes. These findings contribute to our understanding of fact-checking, and suggest strategies that could help promote greater responsiveness to corrective messages.