Real-world Beliefs Research Articles

Videogames and the representation of men and women: an international perspective

In the last few decades, videogames have become a mass phenomenon and have progressively carved out an important space in society and culture. Today, they have growing capabilities to reproduce realistic scenarios, and are increasingly used as an artistic medium with significant narrative potential. In this context, players also need to confront with the representation of aspects of the Self, moving and interacting within video games’ parallel worlds. How these aspects are represented in media can be an important influence on a psychological, cultural and social level. Gender representation can be argued to be almost universal in media and reflects real-world beliefs and attitudes. Despite areas of progress, videogames often feature sexist, prejudiced or biased representations of men and women, both from an aesthetical and narrative point of view. This contribution will discuss the role of gender representation in videogames, aiming to summarize the main features and specificities of different portrayals. Specifically, men characters were over represented compared to women characters as a lead both in the narrative and in promotional material, although recent improvements were observed. Portrayals of womenappeared to feature lean-ideal body idealization, sexualization, objectification, as well as reduced agency. Moreover, portrayals of men appeared to feature muscular-ideal body idealization, restrictive emotionality, and the overuse of aggressiveness and assertiveness. These restrictive representations can have harmful consequences in the users’ reality, such as fostering sexist attitudes and beliefs, promoting restrictive gender roles and ideals of appearance, as well as increasing tolerance of violent behaviors. This analysis suggests that reducing stereotypical and sexist representations, promoting diverse and nuanced representations, and efforts for critical engagement with media portrayals may help reduce these negative effects.

Processes and products of readers’ journeys to narrative worlds

ABSTRACT In this article, I use the metaphor that readers journey to narrative worlds to review research that has spanned my career. In the first section, I consider the processes that enable readers to undertake these journeys as well as the processes that allow them to participate in the narrative worlds once they have arrived. In the second section, I review research that supports claims that readers’ journeys to narrative worlds create distance from their worlds of origin. In the final section, I consider research that documents fundamental ways in which readers’ real-world beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors are changed by their experiences of narrative worlds.

The effects of base rate neglect on sequential belief updating and real-world beliefs.

Base-rate neglect is a pervasive bias in judgment that is conceptualized as underweighting of prior information and can have serious consequences in real-world scenarios. This bias is thought to reflect variability in inferential processes but empirical support for a cohesive theory of base-rate neglect with sufficient explanatory power to account for longer-term and real-world beliefs is lacking. A Bayesian formalization of base-rate neglect in the context of sequential belief updating predicts that belief trajectories should exhibit dynamic patterns of dependence on the order in which evidence is presented and its consistency with prior beliefs. To test this, we developed a novel 'urn-and-beads' task that systematically manipulated the order of colored bead sequences and elicited beliefs via an incentive-compatible procedure. Our results in two independent online studies confirmed the predictions of the sequential base-rate neglect model: people exhibited beliefs that are more influenced by recent evidence and by evidence inconsistent with prior beliefs. We further found support for a noisy-sampling inference model whereby base-rate neglect results from rational discounting of noisy internal representations of prior beliefs. Finally, we found that model-derived indices of base-rate neglect-including noisier prior representation-correlated with propensity for unusual beliefs outside the laboratory. Our work supports the relevance of Bayesian accounts of sequential base-rate neglect to real-world beliefs and hints at strategies to minimize deleterious consequences of this pervasive bias.

Information loss and bias in likert survey responses.

Likert response surveys are widely applied in marketing, public opinion polls, epidemiological and economic disciplines. Theoretically, Likert mapping from real-world beliefs could lose significant amounts of information, as they are discrete categorical metrics. Similarly, the subjective nature of Likert-scale data capture, through questionnaires, holds the potential to inject researcher biases into the statistical analysis. Arguments and counterexamples are provided to show how this loss and bias can potentially be substantial under extreme polarization or strong beliefs held by the surveyed population, and where the survey instruments are poorly controlled. These theoretical possibilities were tested using a large survey with 14 Likert-scaled questions presented to 125,387 respondents in 442 distinct behavioral-demographic groups. Despite the potential for bias and information loss, the empirical analysis found strong support for an assumption of minimal information loss under Normal beliefs in Likert scaled surveys. Evidence from this study found that the Normal assumption is a very good fit to the majority of actual responses, the only variance from Normal being slightly platykurtic (kurtosis ~ 2) which is likely due to censoring of beliefs after the lower and upper extremes of the Likert mapping. The discussion and conclusions argue that further revisions to survey protocols can assure that information loss and bias in Likert-scaled data are minimal.

Overconfidence in news judgments is associated with false news susceptibility

We examine the role of overconfidence in news judgment using two large nationally representative survey samples. First, we show that three in four Americans overestimate their relative ability to distinguish between legitimate and false news headlines; respondents place themselves 22 percentiles higher than warranted on average. This overconfidence is, in turn, correlated with consequential differences in real-world beliefs and behavior. We show that overconfident individuals are more likely to visit untrustworthy websites in behavioral data; to fail to successfully distinguish between true and false claims about current events in survey questions; and to report greater willingness to like or share false content on social media, especially when it is politically congenial. In all, these results paint a worrying picture: The individuals who are least equipped to identify false news content are also the least aware of their own limitations and, therefore, more susceptible to believing it and spreading it further.

The construction of "critical thinking": Between how we think and what we believe.

"Critical thinking" is widely regarded as important, but difficult to define. This article provides an historical perspective by describing how "critical thinking" emerged as an object of psychological study, how the forms it took were shaped by practical and social concerns, and how these related to "critical thinking" as something that results in certain conclusions, rather than as a process of coming to conclusions. "Critical thinking" became a scientific object when psychologists attempted to measure it. The original measurement treated "critical thinking" as both an ability and an attitude. It measured logical abilities, and consistency and extremity of views, but it avoided making assumptions about the correctness of specific real-world beliefs. The correctness of such beliefs was, as problems with other related tests showed, open to dispute. Subsequent tests increasingly focused on logical abilities, and attempted to minimize further the relevance of what people believed about the real world, though they continued to depend on there being correct answers to test items, which privileged the outcome over the process. While "critical thinking" was primarily the domain of philosophers, there was renewed psychological interest in the topic in the 1980s, which increasingly presented "critical thinking" as incompatible with certain real-world ("unscientific") beliefs. Such a view more explicitly privileged the outcome over the process. It is argued that a more reflective approach, though it may be more difficult to measure, is essential if we wish to understand not only what critical thinking has been, but also what it is now. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Bridging the divide between causal illusions in the laboratory and the real world: the effects of outcome density with a variable continuous outcome

Illusory causation refers to a consistent error in human learning in which the learner develops a false belief that two unrelated events are causally associated. Laboratory studies usually demonstrate illusory causation by presenting two events—a cue (e.g., drug treatment) and a discrete outcome (e.g., patient has recovered from illness)—probabilistically across many trials such that the presence of the cue does not alter the probability of the outcome. Illusory causation in these studies is further augmented when the base rate of the outcome is high, a characteristic known as the outcome density effect. Illusory causation and the outcome density effect provide laboratory models of false beliefs that emerge in everyday life. However, unlike laboratory research, the real-world beliefs to which illusory causation is most applicable (e.g., ineffective health therapies) often involve consequences that are not readily classified in a discrete or binary manner. This study used a causal learning task framed as a medical trial to investigate whether similar outcome density effects emerged when using continuous outcomes. Across two experiments, participants observed outcomes that were either likely to be relatively low (low outcome density) or likely to be relatively high (high outcome density) along a numerical scale from 0 (no health improvement) to 100 (full recovery). In Experiment 1, a bimodal distribution of outcome magnitudes, incorporating variance around a high and low modal value, produced illusory causation and outcome density effects equivalent to a condition with two fixed outcome values. In Experiment 2, the outcome density effect was evident when using unimodal skewed distributions of outcomes that contained more ambiguous values around the midpoint of the scale. Together, these findings provide empirical support for the relevance of the outcome density bias to real-world situations in which outcomes are not binary but occur to differing degrees. This has implications for the way in which we apply our understanding of causal illusions in the laboratory to the development of false beliefs in everyday life.

Cultivating Virtual Stereotypes?: The Impact of Video Game Play on Racial/Ethnic Stereotypes

This study demonstrates broad-based, second-order cultivation effects from video game play and provides a significant contribution to our understanding of how virtual representations of race and ethnicity may impact real-world racial and ethnic beliefs. This research used a survey design to assess the relationship between White college students’ frequency of video game play and attitudes toward Blacks and Asians. Results suggest that video game play cultivates real-world beliefs about Blacks, such that individuals who spend more time playing video games have less egalitarian views of Blacks. Interracial contact was explored as a moderator but had no influence on the relationship between game play and stereotyping. Results are discussed from a cultivation theory as well as a social identity theory perspective.

Changing Real-World Beliefs With Controversial Movies: Processes and Mechanisms of Narrative Persuasion

Empirical research has found that exposure to specific fictional narratives exerts significant effects on attitudes and beliefs. However, there is little research about the persuasive impact of controversial movies. We present an experimental research study designed to analyze the attitudinal impact of one controversial film (Camino), according to narrative persuasion theoretical models. Because of its critical message toward Opus Dei, this film triggered some controversy in Spain during its release. The results reveal that the experimental exposure to the movie induced negative opinions toward Opus Dei and religion, and weakened the relationship between political self-positioning and the aforementioned beliefs. Furthermore, the attitudinal impact was mediated by identification with the protagonist. These results are convergent with the Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model.

The Impact of Stereotypical Versus Counterstereotypical Media Exemplars on Racial Attitudes, Causal Attributions, and Support for Affirmative Action

This study examines how exposure to media characters of color shapes viewers’ opinions of race-targeted policies. Exemplar-based information processing, attribution theory, and heuristic policy decision-making formed the theoretical foundation for the study. A 2 × 2 factorial experiment ( N = 363) exposed participants to stereotypical or counterstereotypical exemplars representing the in-group (Whites) and the out-group (Blacks). The experiment revealed that exposure to stereotypical African American media characters compared to exposure to counter-stereotypical ones influenced real-world beliefs of African American stereotypes, internal attributions for perceived failures of this out-group, prejudicial feelings toward this out-group, and lack of support for pro-minority affirmative action policies. A structural model established “internal attributions for out-group failures” as a crucial mediator. Implications for entertainment studies and political communication are discussed.

Attitudinal and Behavioral Pathways of Deviance in Online Gaming

Using data gathered from a qualitative study of a popular online game, this analysis considers the relationship between online deviance and real deviance, as well as the relationship between social control in the online setting and its subsequent impact on real world beliefs and behaviors. Findings suggest that three pathways of connectivity prevail in the current setting. Each pathway has in common the role of a transition block that promotes the idea of the online community representing “just a game.” The nature of varied interpretations of this concept and their implications are discussed. Implications drawn from findings include proposed further research of online and offline behavioral connectivity, as well as an integration of social control research into existing studies of gaming influence on deviant and criminal behaviors. The importance of the online subculture as a unit deserving of criminological study is discussed.

Persuasive Effects of Fictional Narratives Increase Over Time

Fact-related information contained in fictional narratives may induce substantial changes in readers' real-world beliefs. Current models of persuasion through fiction assume that these effects occur because readers are psychologically transported into the fictional world of the narrative. Contrary to general dual-process models of persuasion, models of persuasion through fiction also imply that persuasive effects of fictional narratives are persistent and even increase over time (absolute sleeper effect). In an experiment designed to test this prediction, 81 participants read either a fictional story that contained true as well as false assertions about real-world topics or a control story. There were large short-term persuasive effects of false information, and these effects were even larger for a group with a 2-week assessment delay. Belief certainty was weakened immediately after reading but returned to baseline level after 2 weeks, indicating that beliefs acquired by reading fictional narratives are integrated into real-world knowledge.