Studies Show Sharing Content Online Makes People Feel More Knowledgeable, Even When They Didn’t Read It

This is something we’ve all seen, and some of us might be guilty of. Sharing an article on social media without reading it. The reason that happens is because it can make us feel better.

A recent series of studies showed that sharing content online, even when the person did not read it, increases subjective knowledge – that’s how much the person THINKS they know about something. As opposed to objective knowledge – which is how much they really know about the topic.

Researchers found that people whose subjective knowledge was increased in this way not only considered themselves more knowledgeable about the topic, but also acted as if they indeed are more knowledgeable. The article presenting the results of these studies was published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Study author Adrian F. Ward and his two colleagues conducted a series of two pilot and seven main studies to explore how sharing content on social media affects one’s subjective knowledge on the shared contents. They wanted to know how is our perception of how much we know about a topic influenced by sharing materials on that topic on social media and what factors determine how strong this influence will be.

Participants in the studies were either people recruited through the Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and Prolific Academic platforms or undergraduate students “of a large North American university.” The number of participants per study ranged between 98 in the first study to 904 in the first phase of study 2.

The studies consisted of sets of carefully designed situations in which participants were presented with various textual materials, materials that they would be given an opportunity or asked to share after reading them to a different degree or not reading them at all, depending on the conditions of the particular study.

After the procedure, researchers assessed subjective knowledge of participants about the materials by asking them to indicate how knowledgeable they are about the topic compared to the average person. Objective knowledge was assessed by requesting participants to answer multiple-choice questions about the material.

The effect was stronger when the study participants held the following opinions:

• saw the sharing as voluntary
• when the sharing could be associated with them personally
• when it was shared with closer people

Basically, sharing information on a subject makes us feel smarter. But that can turn around real quick if someone points out we’re wrong.

Read and fact-check things before you share them. Don’t get caught spreading misinformation.

Source: https://tinyurl.com/4axhkxrs

Image – Sean MacEntee / CC