Informational Risk-Taking: A Regulatory Focus Approach

Details

Supervisors

Corneille, Olivier

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques

Abstract

Over the past few years, media and technologies have been taking a greater place in our everyday life and in society as a whole. At the same time, media professionals and scholars have noticed a change in media forms and functions, resulting in an almost completely new media landscape. Consequently, this new environment modified the relationship that both professionals and citizens have with media and technology. Among these changes in the environment, fake news seems to have attracted many scholars across fields. In fact, research in psychology has intensively studied the effect of misinformation on individuals. Among these studies, Gilbert and colleagues (1990, 1993) highlighted that individuals’ default setting is to believe everything they are told. Although they can later unbelieve a statement, it is not as easy as one might think. This cognitive process leads to many cognitive biases, notably the continued influence effect (Johnson & Steifert, 1994). Specifically, it seems that individuals keep relying on misinformation, even after learning that the information is wrong. This suggest that misinformation influences subsequent reasoning and judgement. However, little is known about individuals’ motivation to expose themselves to such information in the first place. Thus, this thesis aims at understanding the factors that could lead to taking such an informational risk. After reviewing the literature on misinformation, the extended literature on risk help us set up a theoretical framework which allow us to conceptualize informational risk-taking. Then, we focus on the regulatory focus theory and investigate whether it may influence informational risk- taking. Beyond this question, we also wonder whether individuals take a similar risk depending on the news topic.