Children's and Adolescents' Social and Moral Evaluations in Misinformation Contexts

Abstract

Misinformation is a major challenge facing modern society and presents a significant obstacle in the pursuit for truth, particularly when navigating social media. Children and adolescents are avid social media users and face a high level of exposure to online misinformation. Previous research has identified social, group-related and developmental factors as being crucial in the development of social and moral evaluations during the childhood and adolescent years, though these factors have yet to be explored in the context of misinformation. The present thesis investigates how the interplay between these social and group-related factors with developmental factors influence children’s and adolescents’ evaluations in different contexts involving the spread of misinformation. Chapter One reviews the literature on the danger and spread of misinformation, before considering the key factors most relevant to children and adolescents, outlining the developmental intergroup approach used in this thesis. Chapter Two highlights the role of group membership and age-related differences on children’s and adolescents’ social and moral evaluations of a misinformer within a competitive intergroup context. In Chapter Three, children’s and adolescents’ social and moral evaluations of an ingroup peer who deviates from their group’s norm showcases the importance of group norms in a competitive context involving the spread of misinformation. Chapter Four replicates the findings of Chapter Three in an alternative misinformation context, while also spotlighting the importance of the misinformer’s intentionality on children’s and adolescents’ social and moral evaluations of a peer who deviates from the group’s norm. Chapter Five further examines how intentionality influences children’s and adolescents’ moral evaluations, but this time in relation to the misinformer themself, and also explores the relationship between Theory of Mind ability and age on children’s and adolescents’ intentionality attributions and belief in misinformation. Chapter Six highlights how perceiving risk of harm to one’s group can influence adolescents’ trust evaluations of a misinformer and shows how adolescents differ by their individual level of engagement in information-scrutinising behaviours when deciding whether or not to trust a misinformer. Finally, in Chapter Seven, the findings of the research presented in this thesis are drawn together to form an integrated perspective of the key factors most influential across children’s and adolescents’ social and moral evaluations in the different misinformation contexts. Based on this overview, the implications of the work are considered in relation to how children and adolescents can become less susceptible to misinformation.