Information on social media can be misleading because of biases in three places – the brain, society and algorithms. Scholars are developing ways to identify and display the effects of these biases.
Academic rigor, journalistic flair
Articles on Confirmation bias
Displaying all articles
A scholar asks whether democracy itself is at risk in a world where social media is creating deeply polarized groups of individuals who tend to believe everything they hear.
Rational arguments and myth busting often won't help you change the mind of a conspiracy theorist. But there are other ways.
Reports of facts' death have been greatly exaggerated. Effective communication jettisons the false dilemma in favor of a more holistic view of how people take in new information on contentious topics.
Millions of Americans believe brown cows produce chocolate milk? The way the media reported this factoid raises questions about science literacy – but different ones than you may think.
If someone sees or hears something they don't want to believe...they probably won't believe it.
With a second Scottish referendum 'all but inevitable', here's a strange pill for the nationalists to swallow.
Quirks of human psychology can pose problems for science communicators trying to cover controversial topics. Recognizing what cognitive science knows about how we deal with new information could help.
Technology exacerbates the news echo chamber, but it can also be the solution to overcoming our deep-seated psychological biases.
We like to think that our political views are well reasoned and backed by evidence. But research shows how easily we all succumb to cognitive biases to justify our own deeply held views.
It's human nature to notice or search out information that supports what you already believe and discount or avoid data to the contrary. The problem comes in when you don't recognize this bias is in play.
We now have access to an Internet containing a vast store of information much bigger than any individual brain can carry - and that's not always a good thing.
Confirmation bias, the psychological effect that makes people unconsciously interpret information to confirm their beliefs, is a big threat to cosmology.
The media constantly bombards us with the latest research on a plethora of topics without much nuance on its quality or relevance. So how can we trust science if it can't seem to make up its own mind?
Leaders need to show followers they're with them, but that's no guarantee they will get everyone's support.
Our understanding of gamma ray bursts (GRBs) – flashes of gamma rays from explosions in distant galaxies – since they were discovered more than 50 years ago may not be as solid as first thought. Research…
Top contributors
-
Director of External Research for frank, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida
-
Associate professor, University of Western Australia
-
Research Assistant Professor, Center for Climate Change Communication, George Mason University
-
Professor of Science Communication and Chemistry, University of Hull
-
Lecturer in Psychology and Cognitive Science, University of Sheffield
-
Senior Research Fellow in Social Neuroscience, University of Melbourne
-
PhD Candidate in Psychology, University of Sydney
-
PhD Candidate in Psychology, La Trobe University
-
Reader in Astrophysics, UCL
-
Professor of Psychology, University of Michigan
-
Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab, University of Cambridge
-
Research Director and Digital Strategist for frank, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida
-
Ph.D. Candidate in Cognitive Science, University of California San Diego
-
Research Professor of Psychology, Tufts University
-
Professor of Computer Science and Informatics; Director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University
