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Wed 28 Feb 15:00: When Curiosity Gaps Backfire: Effects of Headline Concreteness on Information Selection Decisions

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
When Curiosity Gaps Backfire: Effects of Headline Concreteness on Information Selection Decisions

Journalists often use curiosity-inducing tactics in headlines to maximally appeal to readers, yet studies do not consistently show that clickbait techniques yield more engagement. In this talk, I tie headline strategies back to psychological theories about the information gap — the belief that curiosity is piqued when people are made aware of a gap in their knowledge. I introduce the Upworthy Research Archive, a large-scale corpus of A/B-tested news headlines that enables testing the causal effect of linguistics cues on reader behavior. By modeling the amount of information conveyed in a headline using an automated measured of sentence concreteness, I show that that there can be too much, or too little, information conveyed in a headline. I argue that computer scientists and communication scholars should rethink the binary nature of clickbait headlines in light of these findings.

Teams Meeting ID: 329 287 585 675 Passcode: yKwfhf

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Wed 06 Mar 15:00: Student Spotlight: Yan Xia, James Ackland, and Nikolay Petrov

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Student Spotlight: Yan Xia, James Ackland, and Nikolay Petrov

This talk is open to the general public.

Meeting ID: 329 287 585 675

Passcode: yKwfhf

Yan Xia (Aalto University):

Title: Integrated or Segregated? User Behavior Change after Cross-Party Interactions on Reddit

Abstract: It is a widely shared concern that social media reinforces echo chambers of like-minded users and exacerbates political polarization. While fostering interactions across party lines is recognized as an important strategy to break echo chambers, there is a lack of empirical evidence on whether users will actually become more integrated or instead more segregated following such interactions on real social media platforms. We fill this gap by inspecting how users change their community participation after receiving a cross-party reply in the U.S. politics discussion on Reddit. More specifically, we investigate if their participation increases in communities of the opposing party, or in communities of their own party. We find that receiving a reply is significantly associated with increased user activity in both types of communities; when the reply is a cross-party one, the activity boost in cross-party communities is weaker. Nevertheless, compared with the case of receiving no reply, users are still significantly more likely to increase their participation in cross-party communities after receiving a cross-party reply. Our results therefore hint at a depolarization effect of cross-party interactions that better integrate users into discussions of the opposing side.

James Ackland (Cambridge):

TBD

Nikolay Petrov (Cambridge):

Title: Limited ability of LLMs to simulate human psychological behaviours: an in-depth psychometric analysis

Abstract The humanlike responses of Large Language Models (LLMs) have prompted social scientists to investigate whether LLMs can be used to simulate human participants in experiments, opinion polls and surveys. Of central interest in this line of research has been mapping out the psychological profile of LLMs by prompting them to respond to standardized questionnaires. The conflicting findings of this research are unsurprising given that going from LLMs’ text responses on surveys to mapping out underlying, or latent, traits is no easy task. To address this, we use psychometrics, the science of psychological measurement. In this study, we prompt OpenAI’s flagship models, GPT -3.5 and GPT -4, by asking them to assume different personas and respond to a range of standardized measures of personality constructs. We used two kinds of persona descriptions: either generic (5 random person descriptions) or specific (mostly demographics of actual humans from a large-scale human dataset). We found that using generic persona descriptions, more powerful models, such as GPT -4, show promising abilities to respond coherently, and similar to human norms, but both models failed miserably in assuming specific personas, described using demographic variables. We conclude that, currently, when LLMs are prompted to simulate specific human(s), they cannot represent latent traits and thus their responses fail to generalize across tasks.

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Mon 11 Mar 11:00: Psychological Intergroup Interventions: The Motivation Challenge NOTE: This talk is on Monday at 11 am !

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Psychological Intergroup Interventions: The Motivation Challenge

Social scientists have increasingly applied insights from descriptive research to develop psychological interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations. These interventions have achieved marked success in lab and field studies—reducing prejudicial attitudes and affective polarization, fostering support for conciliatory social policies, and promoting peace-building behaviors. At the same time, intergroup conflict continues to rage in part because individuals often lack motivation to engage with these promising interventions. So far, much time and effort has been devoted to designing effective intervention content that produces psychological change, but less attention has been paid to this “motivational challenge.” We take a step toward addressing this imbalance by developing a conceptual framework of methods by which social scientists can deliver the core content of their intergroup interventions to an unmotivated target audience. Along with (a) directly motivating targets by getting them on board with the intervention’s ultimate aim, researchers can deliver the core intervention content by (b) tapping into other psychological motivations of the target audience, (c) embedding the core content in other attractive features of the intervention unrelated to the conflict, or (d) bypass motivational barriers entirely by delivering the intervention outside of targets’ conscious awareness. We define each method and use illustrative examples to organize them into a conceptual framework, before concluding with implications and future directions.

NOTE: This talk is on Monday at 11 am !

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Wed 20 Mar 16:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 01 May 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 08 May 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 22 May 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 05 Jun 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 12 Jun 15:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 19/02/2024 - 14:51
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 21 Feb 15:00: How Can the Behavioral Sciences Inform the Climate Crisis Response?

Other Psychology Seminars - Wed, 14/02/2024 - 12:42
How Can the Behavioral Sciences Inform the Climate Crisis Response?

The climate crisis is one of humanity’s most consequential and challenging threats, and addressing it requires massive behavioral and structural changes. As such, the behavioral sciences can play a critical role in this effort, through large-scale interventions and policy innovations. Following a unifying theoretical framework and leveraging a large array of methods, I investigate avenues in which the behavioral sciences can inform the climate crisis response, by changing false beliefs and stimulating climate action at the individual, collective, and system level. At the individual level, I use behavioral experiments to explore belief change strategies leveraging cognitive processes such as mnemonic accessibility, prediction errors, and emotional arousal, that can be used to decrease the prevalence of climate misinformation. At the collective level, I use social network analysis to investigate emergent properties of collective beliefs, such as synchronization and polarization, to maximize the effectiveness of individual interventions deployed in communities. At the system level, I investigate cycles of climate denialism propagation between society and artificial intelligence algorithms. Finally, to link conceptual processes to their behavioral signatures, I take a global megastudy approach to empirically test the relative effectiveness of the main theoretically informed behavioral interventions at stimulating collective climate action in 63 countries. Together, these theoretical insights spanning individual, collective, and systemic levels of analyses aim to inform policy and streamline the behavioral sciences’ response to the climate crisis.

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Wed 28 Feb 15:00: When Curiosity Gaps Backfire: Effects of Headline Concreteness on Information Selection Decisions

Other Psychology Seminars - Tue, 13/02/2024 - 13:57
When Curiosity Gaps Backfire: Effects of Headline Concreteness on Information Selection Decisions

Journalists often use curiosity-inducing tactics in headlines to maximally appeal to readers, yet studies do not consistently show that clickbait techniques yield more engagement. In this talk, I tie headline strategies back to psychological theories about the information gap — the belief that curiosity is piqued when people are made aware of a gap in their knowledge. I introduce the Upworthy Research Archive, a large-scale corpus of A/B-tested news headlines that enables testing the causal effect of linguistics cues on reader behavior. By modeling the amount of information conveyed in a headline using an automated measured of sentence concreteness, I show that that there can be too much, or too little, information conveyed in a headline. I argue that computer scientists and communication scholars should rethink the binary nature of clickbait headlines in light of these findings.

Teams Meeting ID: 329 287 585 675 Passcode: yKwfhf

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Fri 17 May 12:00: Title to be confirmed The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 15:58
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

The host for this talk is Jeff Dalley

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Fri 17 May 12:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 12/02/2024 - 14:44
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Wed 06 Mar 15:00: Student Spotlight

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 08/02/2024 - 17:37
Student Spotlight

Abstract not available

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Wed 20 Mar 16:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 08/02/2024 - 15:53
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 11 Mar 11:00: Psychological Intergroup Interventions: The Motivation Challenge NOTE: This talk is on Monday at 11 am !

Other Psychology Seminars - Thu, 08/02/2024 - 15:52
Psychological Intergroup Interventions: The Motivation Challenge

Social scientists have increasingly applied insights from descriptive research to develop psychological interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations. These interventions have achieved marked success in lab and field studies—reducing prejudicial attitudes and affective polarization, fostering support for conciliatory social policies, and promoting peace-building behaviors. At the same time, intergroup conflict continues to rage in part because individuals often lack motivation to engage with these promising interventions. So far, much time and effort has been devoted to designing effective intervention content that produces psychological change, but less attention has been paid to this “motivational challenge.” We take a step toward addressing this imbalance by developing a conceptual framework of methods by which social scientists can deliver the core content of their intergroup interventions to an unmotivated target audience. Along with (a) directly motivating targets by getting them on board with the intervention’s ultimate aim, researchers can deliver the core intervention content by (b) tapping into other psychological motivations of the target audience, (c) embedding the core content in other attractive features of the intervention unrelated to the conflict, or (d) bypass motivational barriers entirely by delivering the intervention outside of targets’ conscious awareness. We define each method and use illustrative examples to organize them into a conceptual framework, before concluding with implications and future directions.

NOTE: This talk is on Monday at 11 am !

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Wed 07 Feb 15:00: Understanding and managing conspiracy beliefs

Other Psychology Seminars - Mon, 05/02/2024 - 12:37
Understanding and managing conspiracy beliefs

While considerable progress has been made in uncovering the motivational processes, contextual consequences, and interventions to reduce beliefs in conspiracy theories, certain areas of concern remain unclear. First, recent academic debates have centred around the exact nature of different measures of conspiracy beliefs (e.g., conspiracy mentality vs. belief in specific conspiracy theories). Regardless, what these measures fail to capture are the underlying components that make up a “conspiracist worldview”, alongside the potentially distinct implications of these different ontological processes. To understand this, I discuss our ongoing work on developing a scale that aims to capture a propensity to perceive the world in conspiracist terms. Second, inoculation or “pre-bunking” interventions have proven effective at reducing general misinformation susceptibility and acceptance of conspiracy narratives. However, less is known about the efficacy of these interventions among the specific population of interest; that is, actual “conspiracy theorists”. To explain how interventions might be extended to manage this issue, I will present promising recent evidence from our pre-bunking interventions that are specifically tailored to appeal to those already susceptible to conspiracy narratives. Finally, I will summarise and discuss other potential extensions of pre-bunking interventions to improve their efficacy specifically among “conspiracy theorist” communities.

Teams Meeting ID: 329 287 585 675  Passcode: yKwfhf

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Wed 14 Feb 15:00: A closer look at testimony: Scope, challenges, and consequences

Other Psychology Seminars - Fri, 02/02/2024 - 11:27
A closer look at testimony: Scope, challenges, and consequences

The talk will examine the problem of testimony and its role in shaping our beliefs. It will illustrate the ubiquity of testimony and then draw on work with computational models, in particular, agent-based models to draw out the full scale of the cognitive challenge posed by testimonial evidence. The talk will finish by drawing out some of the consequences of this for the multiple crises affecting our information environments.

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Wed 20 Mar 16:00: Title to be confirmed

Other Psychology Seminars - Tue, 30/01/2024 - 14:14
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

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Mon 11 Mar 11:00: Title to be confirmed NOTE: This talk is on Monday at 11 am !

Other Psychology Seminars - Tue, 30/01/2024 - 14:12
Title to be confirmed

Abstract not available

NOTE: This talk is on Monday at 11 am !

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