The Cognitive and Affective Influences in Decision Making (CAIDe) Lab focuses on the affective and cognitive mechanisms that underlie decision making.
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ALT Peters, E., Markowitz, D. M., Nadratowski, A., & Shoots-Reinhard, B. (2024). Numeric social-media posts engage people with climate science. PNAS Nexus, 3(7), pgae250.
ALT Our findings suggest a benefit to including Arabic integers when posting on social media: those posts were shared and upvoted more often. However, we also found that using Arabic integers resulted in negative feelings and liking posts less. Although originally grouped together as engagement metrics, sharing and liking appear to serve different social and psychological functions. Which is better, liking or sharing? The results suggest that numeric retweets are more valuable based on their links with perceived trust and expertise. Thinking more strategically about how numeric data are presented — including with feasible actions for people to take — may produce greater gains in people’s understanding of benefits, risks, and other costs, which would presumably allow them to make more sound choices consistent with the data and their own values. Bostrom et al., 2019 | Peters & Salas, 2022 | Peters, 2020 | Fischhoff, 2013
ALT Study 1a - Twitter/X Results Tweets with Arabic numbers received 16.9% more retweets. However, Tweets with numbers were liked 5.2% less often.
ALT Study 1b - Reddit Results Posts with Arabic numbers received 31.7% more upvotes. However, comments with numbers did not receive more upvotes.
ALT Study 2 - MTurk Results Tweets with Arabic numbers were... 1. Perceived as more trustworthy and likely to be from an expert 2. Perceived as more accurate, clear, and interesting Tweets with Arabic numbers were... 1. More likely to be retweeted 2. More likely to be reported as negative
ALT Study 1 Twitter/X 8,003,920 Tweets 23.48% numeric Reddit 17,501 Reddit texts 31.92% numeric
ALT Study 2: Survey data from MTurk 212 Participants 20 Tweets 4 Tweet Types 1. Arabic-number consequences 2. Verbal-number consequences 3. Nonnumeric consequences 4. Arabic-number non-consequences
ALT How to get engagement on social media: 1. Arouse emotion 2. Make it seem useful or interesting 3. Reflect positively on the sender Milkman & Berger, 2014 Understudied is the effect of providing information with Arabic numbers (written symbols for numerals) “3” not “three” or “several.”
ALT 1/3 of US adults are innumerate. However, people often prefer getting numeric information and find it useful, and providing numbers can help people make better choices and decisions. Mamedova & Pawlowski, 2016 | Rolison et al., 1993 | Wallsten et al., 1993 Lazard et al., 2017 | Peters et al., 2014 | Shoots-Reinhard et al., 2022
ALT People trust messages that contain numbers more than the same messages without numbers. Gurmankin et al., 2004 | Koetsenruijter, 2011 Trusted messages and messengers typically engage people more, including on climate issues. Corner et al., 2015
ALT 75% of US adults use social media. 50% of US adults get news from social media. Pew Research Center, 2022.
ALT Numeric social-media posts engage people with climate science PNAS Nexus Ellen Peters, David M. Markowitz, Ariel Nadratowski, & Brittany Shoots-Reinhard
ALT Conclusion: Numbers are only one aspect of science communication, but providing them can help correct people who have the wrong facts, modify people’s inappropriate interpretations, and help people avoid the surprise of unexpected events and any ensuing regret or anger. Numbers can also improve trust in provided information and potentially prevent strong emotions from driving number neglect.
