ABSTRACT

When reading scientific information on the Internet laypersons frequently encounter conflicting claims. However, they usually lack the ability to resolve these scientific conflicts based on their own prior knowledge. This study aims to investigate how differences in the trustworthiness and/or expertise of the sources putting forward the conflicting claims affect laypersons’ explanation and resolution of the scientific conflict. We sequentially presented 144 participants with two conflicting scientific claims regarding the safety of nanoparticles in sunscreen and manipulated whether the scientists putting forward the claims differed in their trustworthiness and/or expertise. After having read the claims on a computer in a self-paced manner, participants rated their subjective explanations for the conflicting claims, assessed their personal claim agreement, and completed a source memory task. We examined how differences in source trustworthiness and source expertise affected these measures. Results showed that trustworthiness differences resulted in higher attribution of the conflict to motivational explanations, and expertise differences in higher attribution of the conflict to competence explanations, than without respective differences. Furthermore, main effects of trustworthiness differences and of expertise differences on readers’ claim agreement were shown, with participants agreeing more with claims from sources of higher trustworthiness or expertise.

摘要

外行人在互联网上阅读科学信息时，经常会遇到相互矛盾的主张。但是，他们通常缺乏根据自己的先验知识解决这些科学冲突的能力。这项研究旨在调查提出冲突主张的来源的可信度和/或专业知识方面的差异如何影响非专业人员对科学冲突的解释和解决。我们依次向144位参与者提出了关于防晒霜中纳米粒子安全性的两个相互矛盾的科学主张，并操纵了提出这些主张的科学家在可信赖性和/或专业知识上是否有所不同。在以自定进度的方式在计算机上阅读了权利要求之后，参与者对自己对冲突权利的主观解释进行了评分，评估他们的个人索赔协议，并完成了源存储任务。我们研究了来源可信度和来源专业知识的差异如何影响这些措施。结果表明，与没有各自的差异相比，信任度差异导致对动机解释的冲突归因更高，而对能力解释的冲突归因于更高的专业知识差异。此外，还显示了信任度差异和专业知识差异对读者的索赔协议的主要影响，参与者更同意来自更高可信度或专业知识来源的索赔。结果表明，与没有各自的差异相比，信任度差异导致对动机解释的冲突归因更高，而对能力解释的冲突归因于更高的专业知识差异。此外，还显示了信任度差异和专业知识差异对读者的索赔协议的主要影响，参与者更同意来自更高可信度或专业知识来源的索赔。结果表明，与没有各自的差异相比，信任度差异导致对动机解释的冲突归因更高，而对能力解释的冲突归因于更高的专业知识差异。此外，还显示了信任度差异和专业知识差异对读者的索赔协议的主要影响，参与者更同意来自更高可信度或专业知识来源的索赔。