Reversal News Changes To The Interpersonal Trust Of Strangers Involved And Its Influencing Factors

The way of information acquired and progagated in today has undergone tremendous changes due to the advent of the Internet.Each of us is both a receiver and a publisher of information.However,the convenience of obtaining and publishing information will also affect the authenticity of the information.Due to the reduction of the censorship mechanism of traditional media,misinformation constantly appears on the net.Reversed news is a type of misinformation.Its first report mostly contains negative information about certain person(eg,"Where's my right kidney?","Jiang Jinfu's domestic violence girlfriend"),which causes a lot of attention as soon as its presentation and encourages readers to form bad impression on that person.Later,a contrary report appears,claiming that information in the early report is inaccurate.The facts described in the two reports are quite different,and public opinion has thus also changed drastically.However,it is not clear whether people's attitudes towards the person involved in have also reversed.This research addressed this problem through totally 9 experiment.Experiment 1 was designed to explore whether a reversed news could invert people's distrust of a person involved in news.The self-made reversed news was used as materials.Each reversed news included two passages,the first passage described negative behavior of certain unacquainted person,and the second passage presented contents contrary to the first one.It was found that,both the trust evaluation and investment after reading the complete reversed news were not different from that after only reading the second one of a reversed news,indicating that the distrust of a person elicited by the negative misinformation in the first one of a reversed news could be inverted by reading of its second one.However,no any significant result was observed for the implicit trust.Additionally,the reading of the first negative one made people less trust person involved in.Experiment 2 investigated the effects of individual difference,that is,bullshit receptivity,overclaiming and analytic thinking,on the above mentioned trust reversion.No any significant result was observed.Only for the factor of bullshit receptivity,individuals with high bullshit receptivity invested less than those with low bullshit receptivity after the reading of the first one of a reversed news.Experiment 3 investigated the effects of contents difference of news on the above mentioned trust reversion.It was found that the negativity of the first one of a reversed news had an impact on the trust-invertion.The reading of a less negative first one made people easily alter their trust.For the interval between the first one and the second one,the results were somewhat confused.The trust was inverted better for 5 min interval than that for 0 interval.For the reversal method,none significant result was observed.However,if the difference score of implicit trust was concerned,behavior-reversal made people easily alter their trust than intention-reversal.In experiment 4,participants were divided into two group: easy-inverted group and difficult-inverted group.The aim was to investigate whether trust-invertion was related to individual's resting brain function.It was found that the right middle and inferior frontal gyrus showed higher local consistencies in the easy-inverted group than in the difficult-inverted group,with no correlational relationship with trust evaluation and investment.The functional connection between right and left amygdala was stronger in the in the difficult-inverted group than in the east-inverted group,also with no correlational relationship with trust evaluation and investment.The functional connection between right ventral medial prefrontal cortex and left gyrus lingualis,and right superior parietal gyrus was stronger in the in the difficult-inverted group than in the east-inverted group.More importantly,the former connectivity strength negatively predicted the trust behavior,and negatively predicted the trust evaluation.In sum,this research found that reverse news could invert people's distrust of a person involved in news.In terms of factors affecting the degree of such trust invertion,individual cognitive profile including analytic thinking,bullshit receptivity and overclaiming didn't provide explanation.The degree of such trust invertion might be related to the negativity of the first one of a reversal news and a reader's resting brain function.The results provided theoretical and experimental basis for how to maximize the acceptance of reverse news and reduce the negative impact triggered by the first inaccurate report.