In the context of (digital) human–machine interaction, people are increasingly dealing with artificial intelligence in everyday life. Through this, we observe humans who embrace technological advances with a positive attitude. Others, however, are particularly sceptical and claim to foresee substantial problems arising from such uses of technology. The aim of the present study was to introduce a short measure to assess the Attitude Towards Artificial Intelligence (ATAI scale) in the German, Chinese, and English languages. Participants from Germany (N = 461; 345 females), China (N = 413; 145 females), and the UK (N = 84; 65 females) completed the ATAI scale, for which the factorial structure was tested and compared between the samples. Participants from Germany and China were additionally asked about their willingness to interact with/use self-driving cars, Siri, Alexa, the social robot Pepper, and the humanoid robot Erica, which are representatives of popular artificial intelligence products. The results showed that the five-item ATAI scale comprises two negatively associated factors assessing (1) acceptance and (2) fear of artificial intelligence. The factor structure was found to be similar across the German, Chinese, and UK samples. Additionally, the ATAI scale was validated, as the items on the willingness to use specific artificial intelligence products were positively associated with the ATAI Acceptance scale and negatively with the ATAI Fear scale, in both the German and Chinese samples. In conclusion we introduce a short, reliable, and valid measure on the attitude towards artificial intelligence in German, Chinese, and English language.

Individual differences in cognitive abilities and personality help to understand individual differences in various human behaviors. Previous work investigated individual characteristics in light of believing (i.e., misclassifying) fake news. However, only little is known about the misclassification of true news as fake, although it appears equally important to correctly identify fake and true news for unbiased belief formation. An online study with N = 530 ( n = 396 men) participants was conducted to investigate performance in a Fake and True News Test in association with i) performance in fluid and crystallized intelligence tests and the Big Five Inventory, and ii) news consumption as a mediating variable between individual characteristics and performance in the Fake and True News Test. Results showed that fluid intelligence was negatively correlated with believing fake news (the association did not remain significant in a regression model); crystallized intelligence was negatively linked to misclassifying true news. Extraversion was negatively and crystallized intelligence was positively associated with fake and true news discernment. The number of different news sources consumed correlated negatively with misclassifying true news and positively with fake and true news discernment. However, no meaningful mediation effect of news consumption was observed. Only interpersonal trust was negatively related to misclassifying both fake and true news as well as positively related to news discernment. The present findings reveal that underlying factors of believing fake news and misclassifying true news are mostly different. Strategies that might help to improve the abilities to identify both fake and true news based on the present findings are discussed.

Accumulating evidence suggests that exposure to high levels of early life stress (ELS) may lead to a lasting shift between goal-directed and habitual behavioral tendencies. Cognitive flexibility has been shown to be impaired following early life stress and represents a protective factor for the formation of rigid maladaptive behavior, however, whether cognitive flexibility mediates their association is not clear. Against this background we employed a mediation approach in a sample of n = 560 young healthy Chinese to determine whether cognitive flexibility mediates the association between ELS and habitual behavioral tendencies as assessed by the Creature of Habits Scale (COHS). We present and validate a Chinese version of the COHS (COHS-C) and replicate the two factor solution of the original version. Higher ELS exposure was associated with higher habitual behavioral tendencies and lower cognitive flexibility. Importantly, the association between ELS and habitual behavior was fully mediated by cognitive flexibility, suggesting that ELS-associated deficient cognitive flexibility promotes habitual behavioral tendencies in everyday life. Early intervention approaches that aim at promoting cognitive flexibility may increase resilience for dysregulated habit formation following ELS in adulthood.

The revised version of the declarative knowledge test to assess crystallized intelligence contains a total of 26 items (see file uploaded at the Open Science Framework (OSF) website: https://osf.io/ngdvb/). Initially, we planned to include all of the 26 items to calculate a total score. The scree plot, which was created in course of a Principal Component Analysis, indicated one underlying component. However, when extracting one component, it turned out that several items loaded weakly (< |.30|) on this one component. These items were item 01 (on diabetes mellitus), 03 (on the color of a flame of calcium), 08 (on the pH-value of water), 09 (on the time lag between federal German elections), 10 (on the epoch before the Rococo), 12 (on Newton's law), 14 (on how deflation emerges), 18 (on the symbol displayed on the backside of the German 1€ coin), 19 (on the founding members of the European Economic Community), 20 (on the emission of different vehicles), 23 (on the volume of blood in a human body), 24 (on the amount of protein in various foods), and 25 (on the Stockholm syndrome) 1 . Given their weak loadings on the component, it was decided to not include these items in the final score of the declarative knowledge test to assess crystallized intelligence. 2