Metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on social media: relating processing fluency, subjective knowledge, and political participation.

ABSTRACT:

Introduction

Encountering political disagreements in our daily lives can discourage us from participating in democratic processes. To date, research has mainly focused on social motives or attitudinal mechanisms to explain this phenomenon. In the present study, we adopt a different approach and highlight metacognitive effects of attitudinal (in)congruence on processing fluency (i.e., perceived ease of processing) and subjective knowledge as well as their relationship with behavioral outcomes such as the intention to politically participate.

Methods

In a pre-registered online experiment (N = 1,258), participants saw a political social media post with six opinionated user-generated comments. These comments either all matched (congruent condition) or contradicted (incong

SUBMITTER: Frauhammer LT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10390028 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature