Illusory-correlation effects on implicit and explicit evaluation

Research suggests that people sometimes perceive a relationship between stimuli when no such relationship exists (i.e., illusory correlation). Illusory-correlation effects are thought to play a central role in the formation of stereotypes and evaluations of minority versus majority groups, often leading to less favorable impressions of minorities. Extant theories differ in terms of whether they attribute illusory-correlation effects to processes operating during learning (belief formation) or measurement (belief expression), and whether different evaluation measures should be differentially sensitive to illusory-correlation effects. Past research found mixed evidence for dissociative effects of illusory-correlation manipulations on measures of implicit (i.e., automatic) and explicit (i.e., controlled) evaluation. Four high-powered studies obtained illusory-correlation effects on explicit evaluations, but not implicit evaluations probed with an Implicit Association Test, Evaluative Priming Task, and Affect Misattribution Procedure. The results are consistent with theories that attribute illusory-correlation effects to processes during belief expression

A Signal Detection Approach to Understanding the Identification of Fake News

International audienceResearchers across many disciplines seek to understand how misinformation spreads with a view toward limiting its impact. One important question in this research is how people determine whether a given piece of news is real or fake. In the current article, we discuss the value of signal detection theory (SDT) in disentangling two distinct aspects in the identification of fake news: (a) ability to accurately distinguish between real news and fake news and (b) response biases to judge news as real or fake regardless of news veracity. The value of SDT for understanding the determinants of fake-news beliefs is illustrated with reanalyses of existing data sets, providing more nuanced insights into how partisan bias, cognitive reflection, and prior exposure influence the identification of fake news. Implications of SDT for the use of source-related information in the identification of fake news, interventions to improve people’s skills in detecting fake news, and the debunking of misinformation are discussed