A new study from the University of Texas at Austin suggests thatposting and sharing articles on social media makes people overconfident about their knowledge and believe they know more about the topics of the articles than they actually do.
In fact, the study says that sharing a news article can make people think they know more about its topic, even if they haven't read it and have only looked at the headline.
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“Sharing on social media can create this boost in self-confidence because by posting information online, users publicly commit to an expert identity,” the study says. “This shapes their sense of self, helping them feel as knowledgeable as their posting makes them appear.”
The study, published online in the Journal of Consumers Psychology, includes data from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that showed that only 51% of consumers who “read” an online news story actually read the entire article, while 26% read part of it and 22% only looked at the headline or a few lines.
Marketing professor Susan M. Broniarczyk said people may feel they don't need to read or learn additional information about a topic if they feel they have more knowledge about it.
Broniarczyk and other experts have conducted several studies that support their theory. In the first, researchers presented 98 undergraduates with a series of online news articles and told them they were free to read them, share the articles with friends on social media, or do both. The headlines included “Why Movie Theater Popcorn Costs So Much” and “Red Meat Is Linked to Cancer.”
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They then measured participants’ subjective and objective knowledge about each article — what they thought they knew and what they actually knew. Reading articles led to increases in both objective and subjective knowledge. Sharing articles on social media also predicted increases in subjective knowledge, even when participants had not read what they chose to share , and therefore had no objective knowledge about the content of the articles.
In a second study, people who shared an article on social media about cancer believed they knew more about cancer than those who didn't, even if they hadn't read the article.
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Three additional studies found that this effect occurs because people internalize sharing into their self-perception, which leads them to believe they are as informed as their posts make them appear.
“If people feel more knowledgeable about a topic, they also feel that they may not need to read or learn additional information about that topic,” Broniarczyk said. “This miscalibrated sense of knowledge can be difficult to correct,” she concluded, emphasizing that overconfidence about knowledge does not match the actual knowledge a person has.
Source: www.sciencedaily.com
