People are influenced by members of high-status groups and members of their ingroup. These principles of "status orientation" and "ingroup orientation" can imply opposing forces for people of lower status. Are lower-status individuals more influenced by members of higher-status outgroups or by members of their lower-status ingroup? Engaging status characteristics theory and self-categorization theory, we predict that status orientation is relatively stronger on questions about facts, which have an objectively correct answer, whereas ingroup orientation is stronger when it comes to 'opinion questions' that have no objectively correct answer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBecause fact-checking takes time, verdicts are usually reached after a message has gone viral and interventions can have only limited effect. A new approach recently proposed in scholarship and piloted on online platforms is to harness the wisdom of the crowd by enabling recipients of an online message to attach veracity assessments to it. The intention is to allow poor initial crowd reception to temper belief in and further spread of misinformation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrust is an essential condition for exchange. Large societies must substitute the trust traditionally provided through kinship and sanctions in small groups to make exchange possible. The rise of internet-supported reputation systems has been celebrated for providing trust at a global scale, enabling the massive volumes of transactions between distant strangers that are characteristic of modern human societies.
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