Vigilant conservatism in evaluating communicated information

Abstract

In the absence of other information, people put more weight on their own opinion than on the opinion of others: they are conservative. Several proximal mechanisms have been suggested to account for this finding. One of these mechanisms is that people cannot access reasons for other people’s opinions, but they can access the reasons for their own opinions—whether they are the actual reasons that led them to hold the opinions (rational access to reasons), or post-hoc constructions (biased access to reasons). In four experiments, participants were asked to provide an opinion, and then faced with another participant’s opinion and asked if they wanted to revise their initial opinion. Some questions were manipulated so that the advice participants were receiving was in fact their own opinion, while what they thought was their own opinion was in fact not. In all experiments, the participants were consistently biased towards what they thought was their own opinion, showing that conservativeness cannot be explained by rational access to reasons, which should have favored the advice. One experiment revealed that conservativeness was not decreased under time pressure, suggesting that biased access to reasons is an unlikely explanation for conservativeness. The experiments also suggest that repetition plays a role in advice taking, with repeated opinions being granted more weight than non-fluent opinions. Our results are not consistent with any of the established proximal explanations for conservatism. Instead, we suggest an ultimate explanation—vigilant conservatism—that sees conservatism as adaptive since receivers should be wary of senders’ interests, as they rarely perfectly converge with theirs.

Why do so few people share fake news? It hurts their reputation

“…another account suggests that people should be particularly critical of information that does not fit their priors, rather than accepting of information that does (Mercier, 2020;Trouche et al, 2018). On the whole, our results support this latter account.…”

“…according to which people are not biased because they accept information congruent with their beliefs too easily, but rather because they spontaneously reject information incongruent with their beliefs (Mercier, 2020;Trouche et al, 2018).…”

Majority rules: how good are we at aggregating convergent opinions?

“…Jayles et al 2017). Egocentric discounting is different: it is the tendency of recipients to put more weight on their own opinion, relative to the opinion of another informant, even when they have no reason to believe they are more competent than the informant (Trouche et al 2018;Yaniv and Kleinberger 2000). Egocentric discounting is apparent in various economic games involving convergent social information, where participants spurn the information manifested in other people's choices, even though it would be beneficial for them to take it into account (Efferson et al 2007(Efferson et al , 2008Mannes 2009).…”

“…Moreover, an evolutionary framework can account for the main deviation from apparently optimal behaviour observed in this area: the tendency to put too much weight on the recipient's priors relative to communicated information (egocentric discounting). If we consider the uncertainty about informant benevolence, and the relative costs associated with trusting too much vs not trusting enough, a degree of egocentric discounting appears sensible enough (see, Sperber et al 2010;Trouche et al 2018).…”

Disinformation and Conspiracy Theories in the Age of COVID-19

“…Those responses, however, operate mainly subconsciously (Mercier, 2020), and similar to other evolved threat management systems, behavioral immune responses are characterized by contextual sensitivity and biases that aid adaptive responding (Haselton et al, 2015;Ackerman et al, 2018). Though people are usually wary of other people's opinions or advice (Trouche et al, 2018), they are susceptible to repetition, i.e., repeated statements tend to be rated as more likely to be true (Trouche et al, 2018), the so-called "illusory truth effect" (Hasher et al, 1977;Pennycook et al, 2018). During times of elevated stress, such as the ongoing pandemic, our faulty decision-making heuristics are more susceptible to be targeted by groups trying to control the public narrative to their benefit (Starcke and Brand, 2012).…”