The way people are looking for the Internet can feed echo rooms

The way you are looking for the internet can strengthen your beliefs – without realizing it

By Simon Makin Edited by Sarah Lewin Frasier

People’s opinions become more and more polarized, with “echo chambers” – social bubbles that strengthen existing beliefs – differences in opinion exacerbation. This divergence does not only apply to political opinions; It also addresses factual subjects, climate change through vaccination.

And social media is not the only culprit, according to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. It turns out that people use search engines in a way that confirms their existing beliefs, potentially amplifying polarization. A simple adjustment to search for algorithms, researchers offer, could help offer a wider range of perspectives.

Online participants were invited to assess their beliefs on six subjects, including nuclear energy and caffeine health effects. They then chose research terms to find out more about each subject. The researchers evaluated the scope of the terms and found that between 9 and 34% (depending on the subject) were “narrow”. For example, when searching for caffeine health effects, a participant used “negative caffeine effects”, while others used “the benefits of caffeine”.

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These close terms tended to align themselves with the existing beliefs of participants, and generally less than 10% did knowingly. “People often choose terms of research that reflect what they believe, without realizing it,” said Eugina Leung from the business school at the University of Tulane, who led the study. “Research algorithms are designed to give the most relevant answers for everything we have, which ends up strengthening what we already thought.” The same is true when the participants used the Chatppt and the Bing for research helped by artificial intelligence.

When the researchers accidentally assigned participants to see different results, they saw these results affect people’s opinions and even behavior. For example, participants who saw the research results using “nuclear energy are good” felt better with regard to nuclear energy later than those who use “nuclear energy are bad”. People who saw results using “caffeine health benefits” rather than “risks” were more likely to choose a caffeinated drink later.

Underline prejudices in research terms had only a small effect on the final opinions of people. But modify the research algorithm to always provide wide results, either to alternate between the results obtained with wide terms and provided by the user attenuated the effects of close research.

Researchers “have thought about how these technologies could be optimized for users,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson from the University of Pennsylvania, who studies political and scientific communication. To make research technology do what we need to do, “this type of research is very important.”

Participants evaluated the wider results as useful and relevant as standard research. “People are able to bring different prospects when they are exposed to them, which is encouraging,” explains Leung. “At least for the subjects we have tested.” Researchers recommend implementing such strategies, perhaps as “largely” pimples. “It would be really useful,” says Leung, but if it will happen “is difficult to predict”.

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