Observer > 2022 > May/June
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Volume 35, Issue3May/June 2022
May/June 2022: Debunking Myths and Misinformation
The global impact of misinformation has reached damaging new heights. Researchers are identifying promising strategies for fostering critical thinking and the truthful exchange of information.
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Published 6 times per year by the Association for Psychological Science, the Observer educates and informs on matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology; promotes the scientific values of APS members; reports on issues of international interest to the psychological science community; and provides a vehicle for the dissemination on information about APS.

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    Myths and Misinformation

    How does misinformation spread and how do we combat it? Psychological science sheds light on the mechanisms underlying misinformation and ‘fake news.’

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Recent Research

  • Research Briefs

    Strength of Belief Guides Information Foraging  David A. Illingworth and Rick P. Thomas  Psychological Science This research suggests that people’s beliefs and the strength of those beliefs guide the sources people seek out for additional information when making decisions. While playing a medical-diagnosis game, participants learned about diseases and symptoms by conducting different medical tests. During the learning phase, participants also created disease hypotheses whose strength could later be biased by symptoms’ presentations. Later, they decided which test they wanted to use to diagnose patients. Results indicated that participants’ medical-test choices were guided by changes in their beliefs about test hypotheses—a pattern known as hypothesis-guided search.

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APS Spotlight

  • Eight Early-Career Researchers Receive 2022 APS Janet Taylor Spence Award

    The 2022 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions has recognized eight psychological scientists for their innovative research in areas including social psychology, neurobiological mechanisms related to learning, emotional processes and management, and psychiatric and neurobiological disorders. First awarded in 2010 and named after APS’s first president, the Spence Award honors APS members who have made transformative early-career contributions to psychological science.   Listen to the 2022 Spence Recipients on the Under the Cortex Podcast  Brian Anderson Brian Anderson  Texas A&M University  Brian Anderson is an associate professor at Texas A&M University, where he is also the director of human imaging in the department of psychological and brain sciences.

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