Abstract
We investigate the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection and behavior on the social media platform Twitter, using a convenience sample of N = 1,901 individuals from Prolific. We find that people who score higher on the Cognitive Reflection Test—a widely used measure of reflective thinking—were more discerning in their social media use, as evidenced by the types and number of accounts followed, and by the reliability of the news sources they shared. Furthermore, a network analysis indicates that the phenomenon of echo chambers, in which discourse is more likely with like-minded others, is not limited to politics: people who scored lower in cognitive reflection tended to follow a set of accounts which are avoided by people who scored higher in cognitive reflection. Our results help to illuminate the drivers of behavior on social media platforms and challenge intuitionist notions that reflective thinking is unimportant for everyday judgment and decision-making.
Highlights
We investigate the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection and behavior on the social media platform Twitter, using a convenience sample of N = 1,901 individuals from Prolific
We report relationships between measures of interest and z-scored Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) score as the main independent variable, as well as z-scored age, gender (0 = male, 1 = female), ethnicity (0 = nonwhite, 1 = white), political ideology (1 = strong liberal, 5 = strong conservative), US residency (0 = non-US, 1 = US), education level (0 = less than college degree, 1 = college degree or higher), income (1 = lowest income group in the participant’s country, 10 = highest income group in the participant’s country), and time to complete the survey
Following up on the observation that higher CRT participants followed significantly fewer accounts, we examine which accounts are followed by participants who scored lower versus those who scored higher on the CRT—that is, we examine how CRT relates to which types of content users consume on Twitter
Summary
This body work supports the reflectionist account and suggests that people who perform better on the CRT may differ systematically in their social media behavior from people who perform worse—and in particular, that higher CRT performers may be more discerning (i.e., less likely to follow and share epistemically questionable or facile content). (c) Linear regression predicting quality of news sources contained in each tweet based on the users’ characteristics, including month fixed effects and clustering standard errors on user.
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