Boosting Understanding and Identification of Scientific Consensus Can Help to Correct False Beliefs
通过三项实验发现，先提升人们对科学共识的理解和识别能力，再提供共识信息，比单纯告知共识更能有效纠正关于转基因食品的错误信念，但对气候变化信念效果有限。
Some people hold beliefs that are opposed to overwhelming scientific evidence. Such misperceptions can be harmful to both personal and societal well-being. Communicating scientific consensus has been found to be effective in eliciting scientifically accurate beliefs, but it is unclear whether it is also effective in correcting false beliefs. Here, we show that a strategy that boosts people's understanding of and ability to identify scientific consensus can help to correct misperceptions. In three experiments with more than 1,500 U.S. adults who held false beliefs, participants first learned the value of scientific consensus and how to identify it. Subsequently, they read a news article with information about a scientific consensus opposing their beliefs. We found strong evidence that in the domain of genetically engineered food, this two-step communication strategy was more successful in correcting misperceptions than merely communicating scientific consensus. The data suggest that the current approach may not work for misperceptions about climate change.