When Machine and Bandwagon Heuristics Compete: Understanding Users’ Response to Conflicting AI and Crowdsourced Fact-Checking

Abstract

Three experiments tested if the machine and bandwagon heuristics moderate beliefs in fact-checked claims under different conditions of human/machine (dis)agreement and of transparency of the fact-checking system. Across experiments, people were more likely to align their belief in the claim when artificial intelligence (AI) and crowdsourcing agents’ fact-checks were congruent rather than incongruent. The heuristics provided further nuance to the processes, especially as a particular agent suggested truth verdicts. That is, people with stronger belief in the machine heuristic were more likely to judge the claim as true when an AI agent’s fact-check suggested the claim was likely true but not false; likewise, people with stronger belief in the bandwagon heuristic were more likely to judge the claim as true when the crowdsource agent fact-checked the claim to be true but not false. Making the system more transparent to users does not appear to change results.

Rethinking Communication in the Era of Artificial Intelligence: An HCR Special Issue

“…Topics involve persuasion (Dehnert and Mongeau, 2022), personal relationships (Brandtzaeg et al, 2022), and organizational communication (Endacott and Leonardi, 2022; Laapotti and Raappana, 2022) as well as partisan news coverage about health topics (Duan et al, 2022). A variety of methods were employed in these studies such as experiments (Banas et al, 2022), computational methods (Duan et al, 2022), and ethnographic interviewing and observation (Endacott and Leonardi, 2022). The special issue has received widespread attention; for example, as of March 15, 2023, the article by Brandtzaeg et al (2022) entitled “My AI friend: How users of a social chatbot understand their human-AI friendship” had received more than 6600 views.…”