Dustin Calvillo

Dustin Calvillo

@dcalvillo.bsky.social

Professor and cognitive psychologist @CSUSM researching misinformation and memory

2,020 Followers 166 Following 18 Posts Joined Nov 2024
8 months ago
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Misinformation, trust, and health: The case for information environment as a major independent social determinant of health We argue for the inclusion of information environment as a major independent element in social determinants of health (SDoH) models. During the early …

The quality and reliability of information people are exposed to is a major social determinant of health, like income or education. Improving information environments is essential to combat misinformation, reduce health inequities, and improve health outcomes.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

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8 months ago
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How We Can All Respond to Misinformation academic.oup.com/book/60489 by @leticiabode.bsky.social @ekvraga.bsky.social

Needed: "...correcting publicly to build social norms around responding to misinformation."

Platforms must "promote corrections & take action against toxic behaviors."

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10 months ago
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Can deepfakes manipulate us? Assessing the evidence via a critical scoping review Deepfakes are one of the most recent developments in misinformation technology and are capable of superimposing one person’s face onto another in video format. The potential of this technology to defa...

“Overall, we found that the early studies on this topic have often produced inconclusive findings regarding the existence of uniquely persuasive or convincing effects of deepfake exposure.” journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

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10 months ago
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Is There a Better Way to Fight Misinformation? What if the best way to counter misinformation isn’t arguing facts, but offering better truths instead?

“Bypassing” is a promising strategy for countering misinformation by sharing truthful, positively framed statements instead of direct corrections. New research shows it can correct misperceptions effectively, especially when people are still open to learning.
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/misg...

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10 months ago

Unfortunately, the NSF grant that supports our work has been terminated. This is a setback, but our mission has not changed. We will continue to work hard on making cognitive science a more inclusive field. Stay tuned for upcoming events.

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10 months ago
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This statement from the NSF is insane.

Science is, in essence, designed to separate the true from the false.

Understanding how falsehoods spread is key to the scientific endeavor. It is not a violation of free speech to be proven wrong.

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11 months ago
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Political ideology and trust in scientists in the USA - Nature Human Behaviour In this Registered Report, Gligorić et al. find that liberals in the USA tend to have higher trust in most scientists compared with conservatives. However, they find no evidence that a series of interventions improve conservatives’ trust in scientists.

In this new Registered Report, Gligorić et al. identify partisan differences in trust in scientists in the U.S. and find that several interventions fail to increase trust among conservatives.
https://www.nature.c...
#trustinscientists #scientists #ideology #trust

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11 months ago
A close up photo of people scrolling on their smartphones.

📈New #PSPB research reveals cognitive reflection and open-minded thinking protect against misinformation, while conspiracy mentality increases susceptibility. Truth sensitivity matters more than bias in determining who falls for false information.

📖: ow.ly/580Q50VA86S

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11 months ago
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A path forward on online misinformation mitigation based on current user behavior - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - A path forward on online misinformation mitigation based on current user behavior

New study finds that most people say others should put in high effort to respond to misinformation on social media, but they usually don’t follow through themselves. People are more likely to act when the person posting the misinformation is a close contact.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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11 months ago
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Kaufmann: DOGE claims to have found Social Security loans going to 11 year olds and under. It's a survivor benefit annuity to young children whose parents have passed. That's the problem billionaires without a clue doing a job they don't understand

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1 year ago
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Partisanship and its effects on metacognitive effort, agreement, and misinformation detection With recent developments in misinformation theorizing, misinformation research can now empirically examine theoretical relationships that integrate exposure to, processing of, and responses to misi...

“Both partisans and strong partisans who were presented with incoherence-inducing news stories containing misinformation exerted more metacognitive effort, more correctly reported that the news stories were inaccurate, and agreed less with those news stories.” www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

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1 year ago

“Our studies demonstrate that both partisans, generally, and strong partisans, specifically, presented with coherence-inducing news stories containing misinformation exerted less metacognitive effort, tended to overestimate the accuracy of the news stories, and agreed more with those news stories.”

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1 year ago
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Fighting Misinformation: Why Memory Matters More Than Motivation New research explores the power of memory-based interventions

New research shows that memory strength, not just motivation, is the key to long-term misinformation resistance, with text- and video-based interventions proving more durable than game-based approaches.
matthewfacciani.substack.com/p/fighting-m... #MisinfoResearch

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1 year ago
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Does reflection increase accuracy rather than bias in the assessments of political fake news? - Current Psychology The literature emphasizes two theoretical frameworks to explain the psychological mechanisms underlying belief in political fake news: motivated vs. reflective reasoning. The motivated reasoning accou...

“Reflection reduced Democrats’ willingness to spread fake news, yet it did not affect Republicans.” link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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1 year ago
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NIH abruptly terminates millions in research grants, defying court orders - The Boston Globe The sweeping actions would appear to violate court rulings from federal judges in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.

“This is an assault, not on just one little group of researchers, this is saying certain kinds of knowledge is not to be supported by the government.”

The Trump administration is actively breaking the law.

www.bostonglobe.com/2025/03/06/m...

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1 year ago

Representation without taxation for a handful of billionaires, taxation without representation for the rest of us.

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1 year ago
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🚨New WP🚨
Remember Musk+Zuck+Trump+Jordan etc crying fact-checker bias b/c Reps were flagged more than Dems? We analyzed Community Notes on Musk's X and guess what: posts flagged as "misleading" are 67% more likely to be written by Reps! The issue is Reps, not fact-checkers...
osf.io/preprints/ps...

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1 year ago
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Does fact-checking work? What the science says Meta’s planned shift away from third-party fact-checking on Facebook in favour of a crowdsourced approach has perplexed those who study the spread of misinformation.

Does fact-checking work? What the science says www.nature.com/articles/d41...

@profsanderlinden.bsky.social: "Studies provide very consistent evidence that fact-checking does at least partially reduce misperceptions about false claims.”

Yes, complex. Need to learn more. But need all tools!

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1 year ago
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Disinformation Summer Institute (DSI) - Disinformation Summer Institute Disinformation Disinformation is false or misleading information created and spread to advance policy, political, economic or ideological goals. It is sometimes used by industries, governments, and ot...

New summer institute for up-and-coming scholars across disciplines whose work investigates or intersects with disinformation: disinfoinstitute.org

The first iteration will be this June in San Diego. Applications are due January 31.

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1 year ago
APA PsycNet

A new study reveals that the “illusion of objectivity” is a major factor in believing political misinformation. Partisans who viewed their own political side as unbiased and objective were, ironically, the most biased and least objective when assessing fake news.
psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

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1 year ago
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Do Political Endorsements Affect Support for Conspiracy Theories? Objectives This article examines how support for conspiracy theories is affected by political endorsement. By relying on the literature on partisan cues and the role of political identity (partisan ...

New study finds that Brazilian participants are more likely to endorse a conspiracy theory when a political leader from their political group supports it.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #MisinfoResearch

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1 year ago
Cover of the report - it's in a blue/purple color scheme and shows an abstract illustration of a molecule and the title of the report "Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science Consensus Study Report"

Out now - National Academies consensus report on Understanding and Addressing Misinformation About Science 🧪

It was a privilege to serve as one of the 15 committee members from a wide range of scientific disciplines who put this report together. Quick 🧵1/

www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/und...

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1 year ago
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If—like me—you always wanted to hear @profsanderlinden.bsky.social and @hugoreasoning.bsky.social discuss *with each other* whether there *is* a misinformation crisis, the wait is over—hear them do just that an find out who persuaded whom (or not) in this @undark.org podcast: https://buff.ly/41A70KC

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1 year ago

Truth or Dare? 🎲

Dare to check something is the truth before you share it. Make it a habit!

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1 year ago
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🚨New WP🚨
We examine news sharing on 7 platforms:
1)Right-leaning platforms=lower quality news
2)Echo-platforms: Right-leaning news gets more engagement on right-leaning platforms, vice-versa for left-leaning
3)But low-quality news gets more engagement EVERYWHERE, even BlueSky!
osf.io/preprints/ps...

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1 year ago
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It’s not digital illiteracy: Here’s why older adults are drawn to dubious news Older adults' engagement with unreliable news stems from entrenched partisan bias rather than digital illiteracy or cognitive decline, according to new research.

Older adults' engagement with unreliable news stems from entrenched partisan bias rather than digital illiteracy or cognitive decline, according to new research. #DigitalLiteracy #FakeNews #MediaLiteracy #OlderAdults #PartisanBias

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1 year ago

go.bsky.app/FFCjgks

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1 year ago

Scientists, academics, researchers: We’re excited to share that @altmetric.com is now tracking mentions of your research on Bluesky! 🧪

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1 year ago
We tested a hypothesis that misinformation exploits outrage to spread online, examining generalizability across multiple platforms, time periods, and classifications of misinformation. Outrage is highly engaging and need not be accurate to achieve its communicative goals, making it an attractive signal to embed in misinformation. In eight studies that used US data from Facebook (1,063,298 links) and Twitter (44,529 tweets, 24,007 users) and two behavioral experiments (1475 participants), we show that (i) misinformation sources evoke more outrage than do trustworthy sources; (ii) outrage facilitates the sharing of misinformation at least as strongly as sharing of trustworthy news; and (iii) users are more willing to share outrage-evoking misinformation without reading it first. Consequently, outrage-evoking misinformation may be difficult to mitigate with interventions that assume users want to share accurate information.

Now out in @science.org: misinformation exploits outrage to spread online. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Doing this work was way harder than it had to be, thanks to Big Tech. I want to highlight our lead analyst @killianmcloughlin.bsky.social for his heroic perseverance to bring you this paper 🧵

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