The Dark Side of Information Proliferation

• Attention economy


  A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention (Herbert Simon)
• United nations estimate 4 billion users of mobile-broadband (producers and consumers of information)
• Some estimates that we produce more information in two days now than in the last five millennia
• This places information under the influence of an attention economy
• Cognitive selection


  The process for selecting information based on features valued by cognition. This depends on what information is searched for, attended to, comprehended, encoded, and later reproduced.
• Has American English become more or less abstract over the past 200 years?
• Concrete words are more easily recalled in memory tasks, and language composed of more concrete language is both more interesting and easier to understand. Concrete words are also more readily learned by both second and first language learners.
• More competition for people's attention


  The use of more memorable, concrete words are favored
• Four forces of cognitive selection

  • Selection for belief consistent information
  • Selection for negative information
  • Selection for social information
  • Selection for predictive information
• Confirmation bias


  Information tends to amplify your biases. With more evidence, people become more confident in their initial position, even when the evidence is neutral.
• Confirmation bias in


  • Climate change, capital punishment, legal proceedings, scientific evidence, politics
• Reading the newspaper makes you stupid...and more papers makes you more stupid. Self-selected information can impair accuracy and understanding, because you just gain confidence in what you already know.
• Negativity bias


  We fear losses more than we value equivalent gains (loss aversion). Evolutionary selection for survival.
• Social risk amplification


  • Antibacterial agents, nuclear power vs. food additives
• Social bias


  People imitate others. Many people will publicly reject what they know when confronted with a group of people who feel differently. But will cling to fringe beliefs if at least one other person shares those beliefs.
• People turn off executive (pre-frontal cortex) when they get advice.
• Social influence groups


  More unequal, more winner take all. Independent groups are more equally distributed.
• Social influence


  Amplifies noise, groups are not like other social influence groups
• Pattern bias


  Selection for predictive information leads to superstition and overfitting
• If probability of success is p then probability of at least one success approaches 1 as n goes to infinity. When a researcher tests multiple hypotheses, they correct for this using Bonferonni corrections. But if multiple researchers test multiple hypotheses, there is no correction.
• Any selection bias in publishing will amplify the proportional amount of errors
• Four forces of cognitive selection and consequences


  • Selection for belief consistent information—> Extremism
  • Selection for negative information —> Fear/Anxiety
  • Selection for social information —> Herding
  • Selection for predictive information —> Replication crisis, Risk seeking
• What you should learn from this lecture


  • What's deficit model of science communication
  • Why the deficit model is incomplete
  • The process of information evolution (life-cycle of information)
  • Four forces of cognitive selection influencing information evolution: belief consistent, negative, social, predictive
  • Example from each and their consequences in the world
• Attention Economy:


  Economic system valuing attention as a commodity
• Climate change-what can you do?

  >Less than 20% of the population mention diet (pilot data)

  >Most people think littering is more important than diet (Truelove & Parks, 2012)

  
  

  HOWEVER, according to data/research:

  
  

  >A meat based diet is equivalent to driving an extra 20 miles in your car a day (Weber & Matthews, 2008)

  
  

  >A deficit-model of science communication would suggest I could just tell you all of this and your behavior would change.

  
• Deficit Model of Science Communication

  Assumption that knowledge deficit leads to behaviour change
• What is information proliferation?


  how wide (upstream, downstream) does the data go.
• Consequences of cognitive biases for Information proliferation in attention economy:

  ➤ "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention." Herbert Simon

  ==the more info you have, the less attention you ave to process this info

  
  

  e.g. Sex economy--> limited no. ppl you can have sex w/

  
  

  ➤ United nations estimate 4 billion users of mobile-broadband (producers and consumers of information)

  
  

  ➤ Some estimates that we produce more information in two days now than in the last five millennia.

  
  

  ➤ This places information under the influence of an attention economy
• Cognitive selection + the evolution of information


  Cognitive selection is the process for selecting information based on features valued by cognition. This depends on what info is searched for, attended to, comprehended, encoded, and later reproduced.

  
  

  E.g. SPEAKER said something to LISTENER-> attends to it, encodes it--> process it + reproduces it (tells their friend)

  ^^ if info survives this life cycle= More likely to be reproduced in the future

  
• COGNITIVE SELECTION AND THE EVOLUTION OF INFORMATION

  MODELDecide whqt you pay attention to

  
  

  More competition leads to less if it being remembered

  
  

  Concrete words have an adv--> easier to remember/ process= preferred bc ^ clear

  
• Concreteness Norms


  Rating of words based on their abstract or concrete nature

  
  

  e.g. dog is a concrete word c you can easily picture a dog or even if you mention a well-known dog breed same thing

  
  

  e.g. Liberation + freedom = abstract -> commonly used in politics but can look slightly diff to everyone based on their knowledge, experience, morals, and values

  
• Case study: evolution of American English

  Class discussionCould be more bc info age, digital world, abbre ^

  Could be less abstract-> people better at communicating

  >>Where do we draw the line b/t concrete + abstract words--> dependent on diff ppl (individ diffs)-> can solve this by asking people--> create an avg

  ➤ How can we measure this?

  ➤ Concreteness norms for 40,000 words, rate from 1-5 (China ~5, essentialness ~1)

  ➤Concrete words are “more easily recalled in memory tasks(Miller & Roodenrys, 2009; Romani, McAlpine, & Martin, 2008), and language composed of more concrete language is both more interesting and easier to understand (Sadoski, 2001).

  Concrete words are also more readily learned by both second and first language learners (e.g., De Groot & Keijzer, 2000).” (from Hills & Adelman, 2015)

  
• Evolution of American English

  What might be the cause? Language competition?More competition for people’s attention means the use of more memorable words are favored, andconcrete words are more memorable than abstract--> less thinking required for it be clear= easier

  
  

  Concreteness^^= less abstract->e.g. Trumps President Speech > (more concrete) Washington's

  What is said today > than what our parents said

  Pavios Dual processing theory= audio + visual = ^ memorable/ dog bark + dog photo = more memorable than just dog photo

  
• What are the 4 forces of cognitive selection?

  Selection for:

  
  

  ➤ belief consistent information (confirmation bias)

  ➤ negative information

  ➤ social information

  ➤ predictive information
• Confirmation Bias:


  >Selection for belief consistent/ congruent information>motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, biased assimilation

  
  

  Tendency to seek information confirming preexisting beliefs + tendency to only remember the consistent info
• What is the big problem with information? Why?

  We mainly look for evidence to support what we already know

  ➤ Information tends to amplify your biases➤ With more evidence, people become more confident in their initial position, even when the evidence is neutral➤ Climate change (Corner et al., 2012)--> those who deny climate change-> when there was an article of balanced info for both sides of argument-> only attended to + remembered stuff that support their argument;capital punishment (Leeper et al., 1979), legal proceedings (Westen et al., 2004), scientific evidence (Munro & Ditty, 2011), politics (Munro et al., 2002),…
• UNCERTAINTY, SCEPTICISM AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS CLIMATE CHANGE: BIASED ASSIMILATION AND ATTITUDE POLARISATION (CORNER ET AL., 2012)


  People with different initial beliefs interpreted the information roughly oppositely of one another.

  
  

  X+ interaction effect

  
• POLARIZATION ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND VACCINES

  ➤Lord, Ross, Lepper, 1979 study on Capital Punishment:

  ---> After presenting mixed information supporting both sides, participants did not become more neutral, but more polarized: "proponents reported that they were more in favor of capital punishment, t(23 ) = S.07, p < .001, whereas opponents reported that they were less in favor of capital punishment, t(23) = -3.34, p < .01."

  
  

  
  

  e.g. Isnotreal committing genocide on Palestine-> if their was abalnced article to suo both-> if supp Palestine-> only see/ notice/ remember info if supp Isnotreal-> confidence ^ bc belief is confirmed by evidence

  
  

  
  

  Aynway Free Palestine

  
  

  ➤ Nan & Daily, 2015 study on Vaccine beliefs (pic)

  
• Effect of confirmation bias:

  READING THE NEWSPAPER MAKES YOU STUPID…AND MORE PAPERS MAKES YOU MORE STUPID(Taleb,2007 author of Fooled By Randomness)

  How to choose what newspaper to read-> maybe unconsciously will choose paper that supports your belief

  if newspaper has same POV as you= confirmation bias = make you feel smarter

  
  

  
  

  
  

  SELF-SELECTED INFORMATION CAN IMPAIR ACCURACY AND UNDERSTANDING, BECAUSE YOU JUST GAIN CONFIDENCE IN WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW.
• Negativity Bias:


  Preference for/ selection of negative information over positive information