Do Human Assertions Really Adhere Strictly to Norms? The Effect of Threatening Content in Information on Personalized Norm Perception.

Shijia Zhang, Jiangdong Diao, Jiahui Huang, Yanchi Liu, Lei Mo

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Article in Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland), 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

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5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

5 authors.

Shijia ZhangCenter for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.

Jiangdong DiaoCenter for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.

Jiahui HuangShenzhen Pingshan Foreign Languages Wenyuan School, Shenzhen 518000, China.

Yanchi LiuKey Laboratory of Chinese Learning and International Promotion, School of International Culture, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.

Lei MoCenter for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China.ORCID 0000-0001-8586-7508

Funding

Guangdong Regular College Characteristic and Innovative Project 2023WTSCX015the MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities 22JJD190008

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Assertion is the use of declarative sentences to convey information, which necessitates meeting the "justified-belief norm" as a prerequisite. However, a significant amount of misinformation that did not meet these conditions was spread during COVID-19, leading to a reintroduction of the assertion norm. One possible hypothesis is that the threatening content of the misinformation influenced the perception of the norm. However, this remains unclear to researchers. Therefore, we conducted two experiments to investigate the effect of threatening content in information on individuals' perceptions of norms. In all the experiments, participants read backstories with and without threatening content, followed by answering assertion questions. It was observed that people do follow a looser assertion norm for information that contains threatening content. Additionally, further exploration revealed that threatening factors also lead individuals to more easily perceive the related content as truth and reduce the probability of being blamed. These two outcomes provide some explanation for the underlying mechanism of threatening factors' influence. The research results further refined the theory of assertion norms, offering a certain basis for information management.

Indexed as

information disseminationnorm of assertionthreat

Identifiers

PMID39062448

DOI10.3390/bs14070625

PMCPMC11273758

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LicenceCC BY

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.