研究:即使有準確的信息，人類也會“自我制造錯誤信息”

研究:即使有準確的信息，人類也會“自我制造錯誤信息”

Although social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter have taken heat for spreading misinformation, it turns out that we — all of us — may be our own worst enemies in the battle against the scourge of fake news.

盡管Facebook和Twitter等社交媒體巨頭因傳播錯誤信息而備受指責，但事實證明，在打擊假新聞的斗爭中，我們所有人都可能是自己最大的敵人。

A new study found that people given accurate statistics on controversial topics tend to misremember those numbers in order to fit their own commonly held beliefs.

一項新的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，人們對有爭議的話題給出準確的統(tǒng)計數(shù)據(jù)時，為了符合自己的普遍信念，往往會記錯這些數(shù)字。

In the study, when people were shown that the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States declined recently — which is true but has gone against most people’s beliefs — they tended to recall the opposite.

在這項研究中，當人們看到美國的墨西哥移民數(shù)量最近有所下降時——這是事實，但與大多數(shù)人的信念相悖——他們往往會回憶起相反的事情。

For example, most people believed that the number of Mexican immigrants in the US grew between 2007 and 2014. But, in fact, the number declined from 12.8 million in 2007 to 11.7 million in 2014.

例如，大多數(shù)人認為，美國的墨西哥移民數(shù)量在2007年至2014年間有所增長。但事實上，這個數(shù)字從2007年的1280萬下降到了2014年的1170萬。

People could then pass along this misinformation, pushing the numbers further away from the truth.

然后，人們可能會傳播這種錯誤信息，使數(shù)字與真相進一步背離。

“People can self-generate their own misinformation. It doesn’t all come from external sources,” Jason Coronel, the lead author of the study and assistant professor of communication at the Ohio State University, said in a statement.

“人們可以自己制造錯誤信息。”研究報告的主要作者、俄亥俄州立大學(Ohio State University)傳播學助理教授杰森·科羅內爾(Jason Coronel)在一份聲明中說。

Coronel conducted the study with two doctoral students from the university and it was published online in the journal Human Communication Research.

Coronel和來自該大學的兩名博士生一起進行了這項研究，研究結果發(fā)表在《人類交流研究》雜志的網(wǎng)絡版上。

They said they conducted two separate experiments to measure how users responded regarding societal issues that involved numerical information.

他們說，他們進行了兩個獨立的實驗，以衡量用戶對涉及數(shù)字信息的社會問題的反應。

“We need to realize that internal sources of misinformation can possibly be as significant as or more significant than external sources,” said Shannon Poulsen, a doctoral student at the Ohio State University.

“我們需要認識到，錯誤信息的內部來源可能與外部來源同樣重要，甚至更重要，”俄亥俄州立大學(Ohio State University)博士生香農·保爾森(Shannon Poulsen)說。

“We live with our biases all day, but we only come into contact with false information occasionally.”

“我們整天生活在偏見中，但我們只是偶爾接觸到虛假信息。”