First misinformation susceptibility test finds 'very online' Gen Z and millennials are most vulnerable to fake news
phys.org
University of Cambridge psychologists have developed the first validated "misinformation susceptibility test": a quick two-minute quiz that gives a solid indication of how vulnerable a person is to being duped by the kind of fabricated news that floods online spaces.

Researchers want the public to test themselves: https://yourmist.streamlit.app/. Selecting true or false against 20 headlines gives the user a set of scores and a “resilience” ranking that compares them to the wider U.S. population. It takes less than two minutes to complete.

The paper

Edit: the article might be misrepresenting the study and its findings, so it’s worth checking the paper itself. (See @realChem 's comment in the thread).

  • LvxferreEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    It’s funny how the post about a misinformation test was riddled with misinformation because no one bothered to read the paper before letting their mouth run.

    What I find funny is how your very comment exemplifies what’s potentially a major source of misinformation: you’re making a categorical statement about something that you do not know, and cannot reliably know - if other people read the paper or not. (Ipsis digitis “no one bothered to read the paper”) You’re voicing certainty over an assumption.

    Also note that the secondary source (the article being directly linked by the OP) is contextually more important in this discussion than the primary source (the paper).

    (I actually read the paper, even if not linked by the article being shared. And my points still stand.)

    It’s less ambiguous to participants

    Simpler? Yes. Less ambiguous? I don’t think so - the absence of an “I don’t know” answer might potentially make it even more ambiguous, as participants are expected to make shit up to get over the test.

    It’s easier for researchers to implement in their studies

    A coin toss would be even simpler to implement, but one can guess the validity of its outcome.

    In other words: “easier to implement” is not automatically “better”.

    The results produced are of a similar ‘quality’ to the likert scale version

    The absence of a likert scale is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the unidimensionality of the test, when there are clearly two partially dependent variables related to misinfo: agreement with the statement and sureness.

    For a simple analogy: the current answers are black and white. I’m asking where to put red in that. A likert scale would add shades of grey.

    Note that the paper does acknowledge this second dimension: it’s the D/N in the “VeRiFication DoNe” model. It’s potentially one of the reasons why not even the authors of the article propose the MIST to be used on its own.

    A rather interesting tidbit of the paper:

    we demonstrate how the MIST—in conjunction with Verification done—can provide novel insights on existing psychological interventions, thereby advancing theory development.

    Emphasis mine. What’s the meaning of this utterance? Special focus on the words “novel insights” and “theory development”, that sound a lot like filler. (Ctrl+F the article for context.)

    It’s also interesting to take into account the current replication crisis - that affects psychology the most - when reading this article and the related paper.