Cognitive reflection correlates with behavior on Twitter

Mohsen Mosleh (), Gordon Pennycook, Antonio A. Arechar and David G. Rand
Additional contact information
Mohsen Mosleh: University of Exeter Business School
Gordon Pennycook: University of Regina
Antonio A. Arechar: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
David G. Rand: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-10

Abstract: Abstract We investigate the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection and behavior on the social media platform Twitter, using a convenience sample of N = 1,901 individuals from Prolific. We find that people who score higher on the Cognitive Reflection Test—a widely used measure of reflective thinking—were more discerning in their social media use, as evidenced by the types and number of accounts followed, and by the reliability of the news sources they shared. Furthermore, a network analysis indicates that the phenomenon of echo chambers, in which discourse is more likely with like-minded others, is not limited to politics: people who scored lower in cognitive reflection tended to follow a set of accounts which are avoided by people who scored higher in cognitive reflection. Our results help to illuminate the drivers of behavior on social media platforms and challenge intuitionist notions that reflective thinking is unimportant for everyday judgment and decision-making.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20043-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-20043-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-20043-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().