Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
可靠与不可靠信息的传播
The Transmission of Reliable and Unreliable Information
摘要
Information often spreads and influences beliefs regardless of its reliability. We show that this occurs in part because indicators of reliability tend to be lost in the process of word-of-mouth transmission. We conduct controlled experiments where participants listen to economic forecasts and pass them on through voice messages. Other participants listen either to original or transmitted audio recordings and report incentivized beliefs. Across various transmitter incentive schemes, a claim’s reliability is lost in transmission much more than the claim itself. Reliable and unreliable information, once filtered through transmission, impact listener beliefs similarly. Mechanism experiments show that reliability is lost not because it is perceived as less relevant or harder to transmit, but because it is less likely to come to mind during transmission. Evidence from our experiments, a large corpus of everyday conversations, and economic TV news shows that contextual cues can bring reliability to mind and induce its transmission, but situations in which people share information seldom contain such cues.
中文摘要
信息往往在传播过程中影响人们的信念，无论其可靠性如何。我们证明，这种现象部分源于口碑传播过程中可靠性指标容易丢失。我们开展控制实验，让参与者听取经济预测并通过语音信息传递。其他参与者听取原始或转述的录音，并报告受激励的信念。在不同传递者激励方案下，信息的可靠性在传播中的损失程度远高于信息本身。可靠与不可靠的信息经过传播过滤后，对听众信念的影响趋于一致。机制实验表明，可靠性丢失并非因其被认为相关性较低或更难传递，而是因为在传播过程中更不易被想起。来自我们的实验、大规模日常对话语料库以及经济类电视新闻的证据显示，情境线索能够唤起对可靠性的关注并促使其传播，但人们分享信息的情境中很少包含此类线索。