Misinformation: Intuition, Reason, and Social Media

The Cyber Alliance Speaker Series Presents
Misinformation: Intuition, Reason, and Social Media

Questrom’s Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy is excited to host an upcoming Cyber Alliance talk, featuring Prof. Gordon Pennycook, who will discuss the spreading and fighting of misinformation on social media.

Contrary to the narrative that social media algorithms impact cognition, Pennycook’s research shows that people can and do override their intuitions and that reasoning often facilitates accurate belief formation. Although social media may impact what is salient to us when making choices about what to share with others, this is not intractable: Simple prompts that remind people to think about accuracy are sufficient to increase the quality of the news content that people share. This indicates that unreasonable behavior on social media is more a function of lazy thinking than of an inability for people to overcome social media algorithms.

For one of his most recent papers published in Nature see here:
Pennycook, G.*, Epstein, Z.*, Mosleh, M.*, Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature.

There will be time for casual conversation before and after the presentation.

TO REGISTER, SEND AN EMAIL TO: Mayank Varia at varia@bu.edu