In this research, we investigated the social influence of newspaper headlines on beliefs on various social, political, and economic issues, including belief in conspiracy theories. Building on the seminal study by Gruenfeld and Wyer (1992), we examined how denials and affirmations printed in a credible source (e.g., a newspaper considered to be serious) versus a less credible source (e.g., a free newspaper) affected readers’ beliefs. In this computer-based study, participants were asked to rate the plausibility of 24 newspaper statements (eight of which were related to conspiracy theories), first without any mention of a newspaper and then with the newspapers mentioned as sources. The results showed the general effects associated with the degree of informativeness of the statements. We discuss these effects in terms of the boomerang effect (i.e., opinion change in the direction opposite to that of the opinion given in the headline). We also found that the participants judged the official versions of various events to be more plausible than the conspiracy theory versions of the same events.

中文翻译：

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戴安娜没有参与 9/11 恐怖袭击！

在这项研究中，我们调查了报纸头条对各种社会、政治和经济问题的信仰的社会影响，包括对阴谋论的信仰。在 Gruenfeld 和 Wyer (1992) 的开创性研究的基础上，我们研究了可信来源（例如，被认为是严肃的报纸）与不太可信的来源（例如，免费报纸）中印刷的否认和肯定如何影响读者的信念. 在这项基于计算机的研究中，参与者被要求对 24 份报纸声明（其中 8 份与阴谋论有关）的可信度进行评分，首先不提及任何报纸，然后将提及的报纸作为消息来源。结果显示了与陈述的信息量有关的一般影响。我们根据回旋镖效应来讨论这些效应（即，意见的变化方向与标题中给出的意见相反）。我们还发现，参与者认为各种事件的官方版本比相同事件的阴谋论版本更可信。