Wordless wisdom: the dominant role of tacit knowledge in true and fake news discrimination
Wordless wisdom: the dominant role of tacit knowledge in true and fake news discrimination
In this preregistered study, we investigated the type of knowledge people use to discriminate between true and fake news by asking participants (N = 327 Prolific users residing in the United States) to rate the veracity of different news headlines and indicate what decision strategy they used to make each rating (guess, intuition, familiarity, prior knowledge, rule, or other). We found that participants discriminated well between true and fake news headlines, and predominantly chose decision strategies that suggested they were using tacit knowledge (knowledge that is not easily articulated) rather than explicit knowledge (knowledge that is easily articulated). For example, guess and intuition were chosen 63% of the time, and participants’ discrimination was good even when they claimed to be guessing. The fact that tacit knowledge formed the dominant basis of participants’ discriminative ability speaks to the types of interventions that may be successful in improving this skill.
fake news, tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, metacognition, receiver operating characteristic analysis, linear mixed models
Modirrousta-Galian, A.
5b7bbe48-7221-47e6-bc12-7c8940eb3247
Higham, P.A.
4093b28f-7d58-4d18-89d4-021792e418e7
Seabrooke, T.
bf0d9ea5-8cf7-494b-9707-891762fce6c3
Modirrousta-Galian, A.
5b7bbe48-7221-47e6-bc12-7c8940eb3247
Higham, P.A.
4093b28f-7d58-4d18-89d4-021792e418e7
Seabrooke, T.
bf0d9ea5-8cf7-494b-9707-891762fce6c3
Modirrousta-Galian, A., Higham, P.A. and Seabrooke, T.
(2023)
Wordless wisdom: the dominant role of tacit knowledge in true and fake news discrimination.
Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.
(doi:10.1037/mac0000151).
(In Press)
Abstract
In this preregistered study, we investigated the type of knowledge people use to discriminate between true and fake news by asking participants (N = 327 Prolific users residing in the United States) to rate the veracity of different news headlines and indicate what decision strategy they used to make each rating (guess, intuition, familiarity, prior knowledge, rule, or other). We found that participants discriminated well between true and fake news headlines, and predominantly chose decision strategies that suggested they were using tacit knowledge (knowledge that is not easily articulated) rather than explicit knowledge (knowledge that is easily articulated). For example, guess and intuition were chosen 63% of the time, and participants’ discrimination was good even when they claimed to be guessing. The fact that tacit knowledge formed the dominant basis of participants’ discriminative ability speaks to the types of interventions that may be successful in improving this skill.
Text
Accepted Manuscript [Prepublication Copy]
- Accepted Manuscript
Restricted to Repository staff only
Request a copy
Text
2024 JARMAC Accepted Manuscript
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 16 October 2023
Keywords:
fake news, tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, metacognition, receiver operating characteristic analysis, linear mixed models
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 483579
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/483579
ISSN: 2211-3681
PURE UUID: ea3ca140-bf2d-4fc5-8fd4-75a33ea0a0d9
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 01 Nov 2023 18:03
Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 04:03
Export record
Altmetrics
Contributors
Author:
A. Modirrousta-Galian
Download statistics
Downloads from ePrints over the past year. Other digital versions may also be available to download e.g. from the publisher's website.
View more statistics