Political polarization is often attributed to selective exposure, yet the mechanism by which online environments amplify extreme positions remains unclear. Attention is a precondition for downstream beliefs and behaviors, but existing theories of how it is allocated across political content have rarely been compared directly. In this Registered Report, we specify and test six theoretical accounts of attentional selection: selective exposure, the confrontation effect, decision difficulty, political acrophily, audience-response utility, and task-dependent attention, alongside a null account in which none of the theoretical predictors explain attention. Participants recruited online and stratified by political affiliation view 88 political posts, presented one at a time in a microblogging format, while webcam-based eye tracking measures visual attention. The ideological position of each post is defined as the median placement assigned by independent pretest raters. In the following condition, participants decide for each post whether they would follow the author; in the sharing condition, whether they would share the post on their own social media. After completing the main task, participants rate each post on personal agreement and perceived social-circle agreement. The theoretical accounts are represented by a preregistered set of mixed-effects models and compared using Bayes factors. The design tests whether selecting a source for oneself, compared with sharing a post with an audience, influences attention and, if so, which mechanism best describes it.
Relationship pedestal beliefs (i.e., the belief that people need to be in a romantic relationship to be happy) has been linked to worse well-being. Yet, it is unclear if relationship pedestal beliefs can be primed. Across four pre-registered experimental studies (total N = 830), we tested whether exposure to a low vs. high relationship pedestal beliefs prime are associated with differences in the endorsement of relationship pedestal beliefs and well-being. Results from 3 of the 4 pre-registered studies suggest that participants in the high relationship pedestal beliefs condition (suggesting coupled people are happier than single people) reported higher endorsement of relationship pedestal beliefs compared to participants in the low relationship pedestal beliefs condition (suggesting single people are just as happy as coupled people) – although the lack of a control condition made it difficult to establish what direction the primes shifted beliefs. Exploratory analyses comparing experimentally primed vs. natural endorsement of relationship pedestal beliefs suggest that the priming effects may be limited to lowering (not increasing) relationship pedestal beliefs. Furthermore, the downstream effects of the primes were inconsistent across studies. Participants in the high relationship pedestal beliefs condition reported higher fears of being single (S2 and S4), relationship desire (S1 and S3) and negative mood (S2 and S4), and lower well-being (S1) compared those in the low relationship pedestal beliefs condition. Overall, we provide novel evidence that relationship pedestal beliefs may be malleable. Future research should establish directionality and consequences of exposing people to different narratives about single and coupled people.
Counterfactual (i.e., “If only…”) thinking allows individuals to compare what has happened to what might have been, and may imbue both positive and negative events with meaning. Given authenticity's importance for well-being, we examined whether counterfactual thinking shapes affective and meaning-related responses to authentic and inauthentic experiences. Across four samples (N = 1359), participants recalled authentic and inauthentic events (order randomized), generated either counterfactual or factual details, and reported event-induced meaning in life and affect. In primary analyses on the combined samples, inauthenticity experiences elicited lower positive affect, greater negative affect, and lower meaning in life. Event type interacted with thought type, such that these affective and meaning in life differences by event were attenuated when participants thought counterfactually in the combined sample. Furthermore, affect significantly mediated the moderation of event and thought type on meaning in life, such that affect was a stronger mediator when participants thought factually than counterfactually. Findings were less consistent by individual sample, particularly regarding the interaction effects. This is discussed as an important limitation in conversation with robustness checks on the combined analyses. These findings provide preliminary evidence that counterfactual thinking may regulate emotional responses to authentic and inauthentic experiences, thereby weakening their association with meaning in life. However, effects on meaning were less robust and should be interpreted cautiously. Counterfactual thinking may therefore function as a double-edged sword when it comes to affect and authenticity, softening the negative impact of inauthentic reflection while dampening the positive impact of authentic reflection.
Signal Detection Theory suggests that people may fall for misinformation because they are unable to discern true from false information (i.e., low truth sensitivity) or because they have a general tendency to accept information regardless of veracity (i.e., low acceptance threshold). While a large body of evidence suggests that characteristics of information sources can influence susceptibility to misinformation, it remains unclear how source characteristics affect misinformation susceptibility. Using a signal-detection approach, the current research investigated (1) whether source characteristics influence truth judgments of true and false information via truth sensitivity or acceptance thresholds; (2) potential differences between perceived reliability and perceived partisanship as distinct facets of sources; and (3) how the two facets interact with information content in shaping judgments of true and false information. Across seven preregistered experiments (N = 4,286), we found that (1) source characteristics affected susceptibility to misinformation via acceptance thresholds, not truth sensitivity per se; (2) effects of source characteristics were limited to conditions where comparisons of sources are salient; (3) source characteristics had no effect on partisan bias, in that acceptance thresholds were substantially lower for ideology-congruent than ideology-incongruent information regardless of the source; and (4) perceived reliability and perceived partisanship showed corresponding effects on acceptance thresholds regardless of information content, suggesting that both source characteristics might influence truth judgments via perceived source credibility. Together, the findings provide deeper insights into how source characteristics influence susceptibility to misinformation.
