Do Human Assertions Really Adhere Strictly to Norms? The Effect of Threatening Content in Information on Personalized Norm Perception

Author:

Zhang Shijia1,Diao Jiangdong1,Huang Jiahui2,Liu Yanchi3,Mo Lei1ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China

2. Shenzhen Pingshan Foreign Languages Wenyuan School, Shenzhen 518000, China

3. Key Laboratory of Chinese Learning and International Promotion, School of International Culture, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China

Abstract

Assertion is the use of declarative sentences to convey information, which necessitates meeting the “justified-belief norm” as a prerequisite. However, a significant amount of misinformation that did not meet these conditions was spread during COVID-19, leading to a reintroduction of the assertion norm. One possible hypothesis is that the threatening content of the misinformation influenced the perception of the norm. However, this remains unclear to researchers. Therefore, we conducted two experiments to investigate the effect of threatening content in information on individuals’ perceptions of norms. In all the experiments, participants read backstories with and without threatening content, followed by answering assertion questions. It was observed that people do follow a looser assertion norm for information that contains threatening content. Additionally, further exploration revealed that threatening factors also lead individuals to more easily perceive the related content as truth and reduce the probability of being blamed. These two outcomes provide some explanation for the underlying mechanism of threatening factors’ influence. The research results further refined the theory of assertion norms, offering a certain basis for information management.

Funder

MOE Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities

Guangdong Regular College Characteristic and Innovative Project

Publisher

MDPI AG

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