Abstract
Today’s citizens are expected to use evidence, frequently presented in the media, to inform decisions about health, behavior, and public policy. However, science misinformation is ubiquitous in the media, making it difficult to apply research appropriately. Across two experiments, we addressed how anecdotes and prior beliefs impact readers’ ability to both identify flawed science and make appropriate decisions based on flawed science in media articles. Each article described the results of flawed research on one of four educational interventions to improve learning (Experiment 1 included articles about having a tidy classroom and exercising while learning; Experiment 2 included articles about using virtual/augmented reality and napping at school). Experiment 1 tested the impact of a single anecdote and found no significant effect on either participants’ evidence evaluations or decisions to implement the learning interventions. However, participants were more likely to adopt the more plausible intervention (tidy classroom) despite identifying that it was unsupported by the evidence, suggesting effects of prior beliefs. In Experiment 2, we tested whether this intervention effect was driven by differences in beliefs about intervention plausibility and included two additional interventions (virtual reality = high plausible, napping = low plausible). We again found that participants were more likely to implement high plausible than low plausible interventions, and that evidence quality was underweighed as a factor in these decisions. Together, these studies suggest that evidence-based decisions are more strongly determined by prior beliefs than beliefs about the quality of evidence itself.
Highlights
Suppose you came across an article on a popular website titled “Knowing Your Learning Style Can Help You Succeed in School and Beyond.” Would you change the way you learn information based on that article? Would you send that article to your family and friends? according to a recent survey of nearly 3000 people, 90% of participants reported believing that people learn better when information is presented in their preferred learning modality
All participants consented to participate in the study, which was approved by the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board
There were some other limitations to Experiment 1; first, given that we found baseline differences in prior beliefs about plausibility between the tidy classroom and exercise interventions in our follow-up survey on Mechanical Turk, we wanted to test whether the intervention effect on incorporate likelihood ratings was mediated by participants’ prior beliefs about the plausibility of these interventions
Summary
Suppose you came across an article on a popular website titled “Knowing Your Learning Style Can Help You Succeed in School and Beyond.” Would you change the way you learn information based on that article? Would you send that article to your family and friends? according to a recent survey of nearly 3000 people, 90% of participants reported believing that people learn better when information is presented in their preferred learning modality (i.e., visual, auditory, read/written, or kinesthetically; Boser, 2017). Suppose you came across an article on a popular website titled “Knowing Your Learning Style Can Help You Succeed in School and Beyond.”. Would you change the way you learn information based on that article? Despite the pervasive belief in its effectiveness, the learning styles theory is considered a ‘neuromyth’ that has virtually no evidence in support of it (e.g., Kirschner, & van Merriënboer, 2013; Nancekivell et al, 2020; Pashler et al, 2008). While the example above is specific to education, people are increasingly expected to apply scientific findings to real-world problems. Some of these decisions are personal, such as deciding whether to consume genetically modified foods or vaccinate your children. Research (2021) 6:28 growing across several fields, from medicine, public health, and education to everyday life
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