ArticleCommunications psychology2024
Metacognition biases information seeking in assessing ambiguous news.
Article in Communications psychology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Rethinking misinformation through plausibility estimation and confidence calibration.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Hedging, ambiguity, and the rejection of misinformation: evidence from Chinese readers.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The Dark Side of Moral Conviction-Integrating Political Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Neuroscience.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Article
- Active information sampling in health and disease.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Fact-checking of health information on social networking sites: The moderating role of gender.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
How do we assess the veracity of ambiguous news, and does metacognition guide our decisions to seek further information? In a controlled experiment, participants evaluated the veracity of ambiguous news and decided whether to seek extra information. Confidence in their veracity judgments did not predict accuracy, showing limited metacognitive ability when facing ambiguous news. Despite this, confidence in one's judgment was the primary driver of the demand for additional information about the news. Lower confidence predicted a stronger desire for extra information, regardless of the veracity judgment. Two key news characteristics led individuals to confidently misinterpret both true and fake news. News imprecision and news tendency to polarize opinions increased the likelihood of misjudgment, highlighting individuals' vulnerability to ambiguity. Structural equation modeling revealed that the demand for disambiguating information, driven by uncalibrated metacognition, became increasingly ineffective as individuals are drawn in by the ambiguity of the news. Our results underscore the importance of metacognitive abilities in mediating the relationship between assessing ambiguous information and the decision to seek or avoid more information.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.