False beliefs in an uncertain environment: the role of trust in science and partisanship
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Hosted by Northeastern University
Boston, Massachusetts
About the Talk
Trust in scientific and social institutions has a strong association with the accuracy of our views about the world. Misperceptions and conspiratorial thinking are often linked to lower trust in experts and people in a position of power. While we have increasingly come to examine trust in science in light of partisanship, the two have independent effects on individual information-related behavior.
This talk will explore the relationships between partisanship, trust in science, information consumption, and maintaining false beliefs about health in times of high uncertainty. Based on cross-sectional and panel data, we will discuss how social groups evolve accurate knowledge over time and reduce their misperceptions.
Dates
Thursday, March 14
12:00PM ET
Location:
Northeastern University
177 Huntington Ave.
11th floor
Visiting Speaker:
Katherine Ognyanova
Associate Professor, Rutgers University
About the Speaker
Katherine Ognyanova is an associate professor at the School of Communication & Information, Rutgers University. Her research examines the effects of social influence on civic and political behavior, confidence in institutions, information exposure/evaluation, and public opinion formation. Ognyanova’s methodological expertise is in computational social science, network science, and survey research. She is the director of the Rutgers Computational Social Science Lab. Her recent work examines the links between misinformation exposure and political trust. Katherine Ognyanova is also one of the founders and a principal investigator for The COVID States Project – a large multi-university initiative exploring the social and political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ognyanova’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. Her work has been covered in news outlets including New York Times, NPR, Politico, Washington Post, and WIRED, among others.
