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This is study 2 in this project. A previous study explored the effects of AI performance superiority in the context of automated face detection. The current experiment will do the same in the context of AI image generation. In the current study, participants are challenged to identify whether a painting is human-made or AI generated. The general question is: how will interacting with AI, and defeating it or losing to it, affect our sense of agency, feelings of superiority, and evaluation of the AI?

One part of project published here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01649-6

Communication to inform the public of scientific facts about societally relevant issues such as climate change plays a pivotal role in future policies and public welfare. Individuals that hold views that are based on misperceptions or a lack of scientific knowledge may make suboptimal decisions, which can lead to negative consequences for themselves, others, or society as a whole. Consensus communication - which involves describing the prevalence of the consensus belief - has shown to be highly effective in converting people with neutral and mixed beliefs to the consensus belief, but not to those who hold on to counterfactual beliefs. This research aims to examine the effectiveness of different consensus communication techniques on the climate change persuasion-resistant by using dynamic norms (i.e. describing the trend of a consensus belief over time), framing techniques (i.e reversing the frame of the message) and the combination of both (i.e. dynamic reverse framing).

In this study, we will investigate the effect of gender-blindness on support for collective action. Gender-blindness is the idea that we should disregard differences between the genders to increase gender equality. Gender-awareness on the other hand is the idea that the different genders can contribute to society in different ways and that these differences should be acknowledged and embraced. Previous research has found that gender-blindness increases equality at the workplace (Martin, 2018; Martin & Phillips, 2017). However, according to the irony of harmony, focusing on similarities between groups can also have negative consequences such as a decrease in support for social change (Dovidio et al., 2016, 2016; Saguy et al., 2009). To our knowledge, there are no studies investigating the effects of gender-blindness on support for collective action yet. In a previous study, we found that gender-identity strength positively relates to support for collective action while a common identity (identification with British people) related negatively to support for collective action. In this study, we want to replicate the findings on gender-identity and also investigate the relation between gender-identity strength and gender-blindness.

Even nowadays, women and other marginalised genders are disadvantaged in society. One way to reduce this inequality is to neglect gender differences and instead enhance identification with one common ingroup that encompasses all genders (e.g., people from one country). However, according to the irony of harmony, identifying with a common ingroup might increase satisfaction with the status quo and thereby undermine support for social change. Therefore, the current research will examine whether identifying with a subgroup (‘women’) compared to a common ingroup (‘British people’) might increase support for collective action. Specifically, we expect that women whose gender subgroup is salient will engage in social comparison processes and thereby perceive more inequality in society. To cope with the perceived disadvantage, we hypothesise that women identifying with their gender subgroup will support collective action more than women who identify with a common ingroup that also encompasses the privileged group in society.

AI technology is increasingly establishing itself as a prominent decision-maker in our daily lives. An important topic for discussion concerns the maintenance of human autonomy. Do we mind giving up our everyday agency (i.e., the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices) to intelligent machines? Does it matter if we surrender agency to AI as opposed to a human? And do we accept automated decisions more readily if the benefits are great enough, even if they mean giving up agency? In this study, we use everyday life decision scenarios in a 2(participant agency: yes/no) X 2(benefits high/low) vignette experiment, in which participants must make an explicit choice between a human or AI decision-maker, based on how they trade-off their own agency and the decision’s benefits potential.

Digital technology is already making decisions in finance, health, dating, commerce, and many other domains that affect our everyday lives, whether we like it or not. Until recently, much of this decision-making was strictly a privilege of humans. As machines are increasingly acting as autonomous agents, fears are that ultimately we will give up the idea that humans are autonomous agents. The main questions are: 1. As we encounter machine-made decisions, do we feel that our sense of being autonomous agents is compromised? 2. What are the circumstances under which we accept the technology and its decisions regardless? The study will do this by measuring the effects of machine vs human decisions on Sense of Agency and acceptance of decision and technology. We will examine whether the level of control over a decision exerted by the user as well as the added value of the decision affect this relation.

Scientific consensus communication is among the most promising interventions to minimize the gap between experts’ and the public’s belief in scientific facts. There is, however, discussion about its effectiveness in changing consensus perceptions and beliefs about contested science topics. This preregistered meta-analysis assessed the effects of communicating the existence of scientific consensus on perceived scientific consensus and belief in scientific facts. Combining 43 experiments about climate change, genetically modified food, and vaccination, we show that single exposure to consensus messaging has a positive effect on perceived scientific consensus (g = 0.55) and on factual beliefs (g = 0.12). Consensus communication yielded very similar effects for climate change and genetically modified food, while the low number of experiments about vaccination prevented conclusions regarding this topic specifically. Although the effect is small, communicating scientific consensus appears to be an effective way to change factual beliefs about contested science topics.

This is a preregistration of a meta-analysis protocol.

People are reluctant to adopt self-driving cars due to trust concerns. However, as self-driving cars can drastically reduce traffic accidents, gaining insight in the ways trust in these cars can be influenced is important. Having no control might be a main fear related to trust. Hence, this study will investigate whether inducing an illusion of control (IOC) increases trust. Participants will customise a driving simulator’s colour and driving style, without these features affecting the simulator's programme. We expect participants in the IOC condition to be more trusting than control participants. Being able to change the settings might make participants with an internal locus of control feel more competent and aware of their freedom to control the environment compared to people with an external locus of control. Therefore, internal locus of control might strengthen the effect. This study will also explore whether there is a discrepancy between subjective and objective trust.

Supplemental material, sj-docx-3-pss-10.1177_09567976211007788 for Boosting Understanding and Identification of Scientific Consensus Can Help to Correct False Beliefs by Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling and Moniek Buijzen in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_09567976211007788 for Boosting Understanding and Identification of Scientific Consensus Can Help to Correct False Beliefs by Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling and Moniek Buijzen in Psychological Science

2x2x2x2 between-subjects experiment, to test hypotheses on how user control and benefits affect the choice between a human expert and algorithm in a financial decision scenario and an online dating scenario

Supplemental material, sj-docx-4-pss-10.1177_09567976211007788 for Boosting Understanding and Identification of Scientific Consensus Can Help to Correct False Beliefs by Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling and Moniek Buijzen in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-pss-10.1177_09567976211007788 for Boosting Understanding and Identification of Scientific Consensus Can Help to Correct False Beliefs by Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling and Moniek Buijzen in Psychological Science

Supplemental material, sj-docx-2-pss-10.1177_09567976211007788 for Boosting Understanding and Identification of Scientific Consensus Can Help to Correct False Beliefs by Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling and Moniek Buijzen in Psychological Science

Digital technology is already making decisions in finance, health, dating, commerce, and many other domains that affect our everyday lives, whether we like it or not. Until recently, much of this decision-making was strictly a privilege of humans. As machines are increasingly acting as autonomous agents, fears are that ultimately we will give up the idea that humans are autonomous agents. This raises the question how much of our control on our own decisions we are prepared to give up to machines. This study will answer this question by measuring the effects of machine vs human decisions on acceptance of decision and technology. We will examine whether the level of control over a decision exerted by the user as well as the added value of the decision affect this relation.

Digital technology is already making decisions in finance, health, dating, commerce, and many other domains that affect our everyday lives, whether we like it or not. Until recently, much of this decision-making was strictly a privilege of humans. As machines are increasingly acting as autonomous agents, fears are that ultimately we will give up the idea that humans are autonomous agents. This raises the question how much of our control on our own decisions we are prepared to give up to machines. This study will answer this question by measuring the effects of machine vs human decisions on acceptance of decision and technology. We will examine whether the level of control over a decision exerted by the user as well as the added value of the decision affect this relation.

Supplemental material, CorrectingMisperceptions_SupplementalMaterial_accepted for Correcting Misperceptions: The Causal Role of Motivation in Corrective Science Communication About Vaccine and Food Safety by Aart van Stekelenburg, Gabi Schaap, Harm Veling and Moniek Buijzen in Science Communication