Abstract

The current work was conducted to better understand the influences of source presence and individual differences on evaluating and sharing information from multiple conflicting Internet texts about childhood vaccinations. The results indicate that college student readers appeared to be insensitive to a source availability manipulation. However, their preexisting beliefs, specifically in terms of their misconceptions regarding childhood vaccinations, appeared to be detrimental to their online information sharing proclivities. In particular, readers with misconceptions about childhood vaccinations were more likely to include inaccurate concepts when writing an essay to share with a friend. Additionally, readers with misconceptions were less able to distinguish more from less credible information, in terms of reliability. The patterns suggest that readers with misconception-based beliefs may be at risk for misinforming others after reading multiple conflicting texts on the Internet. Limitations and future directions of the current work are discussed.

摘要

进行当前的工作是为了更好地了解来源的存在和个人差异对评估和共享来自有关儿童接种疫苗的多个相互冲突的互联网文本的信息的影响。结果表明，大学生读者似乎对源可用性操纵不敏感。但是，他们先前的信念，尤其是对儿童疫苗接种的误解，似乎不利于他们在线信息共享的倾向。尤其是，对儿童疫苗接种有误解的读者在撰写与朋友分享的文章时，更有可能包含不正确的概念。此外，就可靠性而言，具有误解的读者无法将更多信息与较不可信的信息区分开。这些模式表明，具有基于误解的信念的读者在互联网上阅读多个冲突的文本后可能会误导他人。讨论了当前工作的局限性和未来发展方向。