Suchergebnisse

Menschen und Medien in unserer Umgebung überfluten uns täglich mit Gedanken und Wissen. Wer bestimmt aber, was ich denke und meine? Wir selbst oder andere? Und wie erkennen wir Irrtümer und Manipulationen? Anhand verblüffender Beispiele aus dem Alltag zeigen Steven Sloman und Philip Fernbach, wie Denken funktioniert: Der Schlüssel zu unserem geistigen Horizont liegt in der sozialen Natur menschlicher Kognition. Die beiden renommierten Wissenschaftler geben erstaunliche Einblicke in das Wechselspiel von Gehirn und Umwelt und schildern anschaulich, wie wir uns permanent zwischen Wissen und Wissensillusion durchs Leben bewegen. »Wir wissen alle weniger, als wir zu wissen glauben. Nicht einmal, wie viel oder wie wenig wir wissen, wissen wir. Dieser Zustand lässt sich nicht aufheben, aber zumindest gibt es Hilfe: dieses faszinierende Buch.« Steven Pinker »Unser Denken ist voller Fehler. Lesen Sie dieses Buch und Sie werden die Qualität Ihrer Entscheidungen deutlich verbessern.« Rolf Dobelli

Ignorance and the community of knowledge -- What we know -- Why we think -- How we think -- Why we think what isn't so -- Thinking with our bodies and the world -- Thinking with other people -- Thinking with technology -- Thinking about science -- Thinking about politics -- The new definition of smart -- Making people smart -- Making smarter decisions -- Appraising ignorance and illusion

AbstractWe evaluate whether people will outsource their opinion on public policy to consensus conference participants. The ideal consensus conference brings together a representative sample of citizens and introduces them to the range of perspectives and evidence related to some policy. The sample is given the opportunity to ask questions of experts and to deliberate. Attitudes about each policy are queried before and after the conference to see if the event has changed minds. In general, such conferences do produce opinion shifts. Our hypothesis is that the shift can be leveraged by simply communicating conference results – absent substantive information about the merits of the policies discussed – to scale up the value of conferences to the population at large. In five studies, we tell participants about the impact of a consensus conference on a sample of citizens' opinions for a range of policies without providing any new information about the inherent value of the policy itself. For several of the policies, we see a shift in opinion. We conclude that the value of consensus conferences can be scaled up simply by telling an electorate about its results. This suggests an economical way to bring evidence and rational argument to bear on citizens' policy attitudes.

Objective To assess the extent to which political ideology affects COVID-19 preventive behaviors and related beliefs and attitudes in the U.S. Methods Two surveys, one using a convenience sample and another using a nationally representative sample, were conducted in September and November 2020, respectively. Multiple regressions compared political ideology with identified COVID-19 risk factors and demographics as well as knowledge measures. Surveys were followed by a review of the emerging COVID-19 behavioral literature (completed in January 2021) to assess the frequency of ideological effects in publicly reported data. Results In the survey data, political ideology was a significant predictor for all dependent variables in both surveys, and the strongest predictor for most of them. Out of 141 estimates from 44 selected studies, political ideology was a significant predictor of responses in 112 (79%) and showed the largest effect on COVID-19-related measures in close to half of these estimates (44%). Conclusions This study reinforces previous research that found partisan differences in engaging in behaviors with long-term health consequences by showing that these ideologically-driven differences manifest in situations where the possibility of severe illness or death is immediate and the potential societal impact is significant. The substantial implications for public health research and practice are both methodological and conceptual.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the extent to which political ideology affects COVID-19 preventive behaviors and related beliefs and attitudes in the U.S. METHODS: Two surveys, one using a convenience sample and another using a nationally representative sample, were conducted in September and November 2020, respectively. Multiple regressions compared political ideology with identified COVID-19 risk factors and demographics as well as knowledge measures. Surveys were followed by a review of the emerging COVID-19 behavioral literature (completed in January 2021) to assess the frequency of ideological effects in publicly reported data. RESULTS: In the survey data, political ideology was a significant predictor for all dependent variables in both surveys, and the strongest predictor for most of them. Out of 141 estimates from 44 selected studies, political ideology was a significant predictor of responses in 112 (79%) and showed the largest effect on COVID-19-related measures in close to half of these estimates (44%). CONCLUSIONS: This study reinforces previous research that found partisan differences in engaging in behaviors with long-term health consequences by showing that these ideologically-driven differences manifest in situations where the possibility of severe illness or death is immediate and the potential societal impact is significant. The substantial implications for public health research and practice are both methodological and conceptual.

AbstractFive experiments are reported to compare models of attitude formation about hot-button policy issues like climate change. In broad strokes, the deficit model states that incorrect opinions are a result of a lack of information, while the cultural cognition model states that opinions are formed to maximize congruence with the group that one affiliates with. The community of knowledge hypothesis takes an integrative position. It states that opinions are based on perceived knowledge, but that perceptions are partly determined by the knowledge that sits in the heads of others in the community. We use the fact that people's sense of understanding is affected by knowledge of others' understanding to arbitrate among these views in the domain of public policy. In all experiments (N = 1767), we find that the contagious sense of understanding is nonpartisan and robust to experimental manipulations intended to eliminate it. While ideology clearly affects people's attitudes, sense of understanding does as well, but level of actual knowledge does not. And the extent to which people overestimate their own knowledge partly determines the extremity of their position. The pattern of results is most consistent with the community of knowledge hypothesis. Implications for climate policy are considered.

The Internet provides fast and ubiquitous communication that enables all kinds of communities and provides citizens with easy access to vast amounts of information, although the information is not necessarily verified and may present a distorted view of real events or facts. The Internet's power as an instant source of mass information can be used to influence opinions, which can have far-reaching consequences. This report's purpose is to provide input into the advisory processes that determine European support for research into the effects and management of Fake News (e.g. deliberate misinformation), Echo Chambers (e.g. closed communities where biases can be reinforced through lack of diversity in opinions), and the Internet's influence on social and political movements such as Populism; to provide insight into how innovation that takes these aspects into account can be supported. To address this aim, this report concerns socio-technical implications of the Internet related to the impact of closed communities and misinformation and makes recommendations derived from a consultation with domain experts concerning the research needed to address specific challenges. This study has used the Delphi Method, an iterative consultation mechanism aimed at consensus building within a targeted panel of experts. Three rounds of iteration were undertaken and a total of fourteen experts participated in all three rounds. The result of the consultation is 67 assertion statements that reached consensus amongst the experts in five broad themes, and these are presented in this report and summarised into key recommendations. The key overarching recommendation is that we need to understand how opinions are formed and are influenced in the current digital age. Investigations are needed to understand the underlying cognitive and emotional processes that enable peoples' opinions to be influenced in the context of a hybrid media system that mixes online and offline channels and broadcast and interactive social media.

The Internet provides fast and ubiquitous communication that enables all kinds of communities and provides citizens with easy access to vast amounts of information, although the information is not necessarily verified and may present a distorted view of real events or facts. The Internet's power as an instant source of mass information can be used to influence opinions, which can have far-reaching consequences. This report's purpose is to provide input into the advisory processes that determine European support for research into the effects and management of Fake News (e.g. deliberate misinformation), Echo Chambers (e.g. closed communities where biases can be reinforced through lack of diversity in opinions), and the Internet's influence on social and political movements such as Populism; to provide insight into how innovation that takes these aspects into account can be supported. To address this aim, this report concerns socio-technical implications of the Internet related to the impact of closed communities and misinformation and makes recommendations derived from a consultation with domain experts concerning the research needed to address specific challenges. This study has used the Delphi Method, an iterative consultation mechanism aimed at consensus building within a targeted panel of experts. Three rounds of iteration were undertaken and a total of fourteen experts participated in all three rounds. The result of the consultation is 67 assertion statements that reached consensus amongst the experts in five broad themes, and these are presented in this report and summarised into key recommendations. The key overarching recommendation is that we need to understand how opinions are formed and are influenced in the current digital age. Investigations are needed to understand the underlying cognitive and emotional processes that enable peoples' opinions to be influenced in the context of a hybrid media system that mixes online and offline channels and broadcast and interactive social media.