Full Professor at BI Norwegian Business School and Associate Research Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. PhD from Yale University and dual Bachelor's degrees in Computer Science and Psychology from New York University.
My research lies at the intersection of psychology, data science, and political behavior, ranging across a wide range of topics—from motivation and social cognition to political polarization and belief formation. Recent work focuses on distorted and destructive belief systems and how to counteract their harmful effects. My research is motivated by a broader commitment to protecting and advancing democratic institutions, civil liberties, and human rights.
I’ve published numerous peer-reviewed articles across leading journals, including in Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. My research has been cited in public policy forums and covered by international media, including CNN, BBC, and The Times.
Please see my Website for a full list of publications.
Please see my Github Page for access to open source software.
Publikasjoner
Sultan, Mubashir; Tump, Alan N., Ehmann, Nina, Lorenz-Spreen, Philipp, Hertwig, Ralph, Gollwitzer, Anton & Kurvers, Ralf H J M (2024)
Susceptibility to online misinformation: A systematic meta-analysis of demographic and psychological factors
Nearly five billion people use and receive news through social media and there is widespread concern about the negative consequences of misinformation on social media (e.g., election interference, vaccine hesitancy). Despite a burgeoning body of research on misinformation, it remains largely unclear who is susceptible to misinformation and why. To address this, we conducted a systematic individual participant data meta-analysis covering 256,337 unique choices made by 11,561 US-based participants across 31 experiments. Our meta-analysis reveals the impact of key demographic and psychological factors on online misinformation veracity judgments. We also disentangle the ability to discern between true and false news (discrimination ability) from response bias, that is, the tendency to label news as either true (true-news bias) or false (false-news bias). Across all studies, participants were well above-chance accurate for both true (68.51%) and false (67.24%) news headlines. We find that older age, higher analytical thinking skills, and identifying as a Democrat are associated with higher discrimination ability. Additionally, older age and higher analytical thinking skills are associated with a false-news bias (caution). In contrast, ideological congruency (alignment of participants’ ideology with news), motivated reflection (higher analytical thinking skills being associated with a greater congruency effect), and self-reported familiarity with news are associated with a true-news bias (naïvety). We also find that experiments on MTurk show higher discrimination ability than those on Lucid. Displaying sources alongside news headlines is associated with improved discrimination ability, with Republicans benefiting more from source display. Our results provide critical insights that can help inform the design of targeted interventions.
Marshall, Julia; Mermin-Bunnell, Kellen, Gollwitzer, Anton, Retelsdorf, Jan & Bloom, Paul (2024)
Cross-cultural conceptions of third-party intervention across childhood
Third-party intervention is a cornerstone of cooperative societies, yet we know little about how children develop an understanding of this social behavior. The present work generates a cross-cultural and developmental picture of how 6-, 9-, and 12-year-olds (N = 447) across four societies (India, Germany, Uganda, and the United States) reason about third-party intervention. To do so, we measured children’s obligation judgments and unstructured descriptions of third-party intervention. Although some cultural differences emerged, 6-year-olds largely considered bystanders as obligated to respond to wrongdoing, regardless of the bystander’s social position. In contrast, 9- and 12-year-olds were more likely to exclusively ascribe this social responsibility to people in positions of authority. Despite these age differences, children of all ages generated role-specific descriptions of third-party intervention, with authority figures intervening in distinct ways from peers. For authority figures, children in India and Uganda described third-party intervention as involving corporal punishment or unspecified punishment, whereas children in the United States described such intervention as involving only verbal intervention (i.e., telling someone to stop). For peers, children in all societies described third-party intervention as involving reporting misdeeds to an authority. Collectively, these data show that early conceptualizations of third-party intervention are rooted in shared notions of obligation yet are also subject to cultural and contextual influences.
Does political partisanship extend to childhood? To what degree are children, a largely non-political population, impacted by parents’ and communities’ political orientations? We examined children's behaviours and attitudes during a politically divisive event – the COVID-19 pandemic. Children (4- to 12-year-olds; N = 313) of liberal (vs. conservative) parents reported greater preventive COVID-19 behaviours, such as mask wearing and physical distancing, and responded more positively to these health behaviours. At the community level, children living in Democratic-voting (vs. Republican-voting) U.S. counties more strongly endorsed preventive COVID-19 behaviours. Political orientation was a better predictor than education, income, religiosity, population-density, and infection rates. Mediation and moderation analyses revealed that the parent–child political link was driven by children's perceptions of their parents' guidance, behaviours, and concern about COVID-19, and that this link was attenuated in Democratic- versus Republican-voting counties. Political orientation appears to play an unexpectedly prominent role, both at the intimate family and broader community level, in determining children's behaviours and attitudes.
False beliefs pose significant societal threats, including health risks, political polarization and even violence. In two studies (N = 884) we explored the efficacy of an individual-based approach to correcting false beliefs. We examined whether the character virtue of intellectual humility (IH)—an appreciation of one's intellectual boundaries—encourages revising one's false beliefs in response to counter-information. Our research produced encouraging but also mixed findings. Among participants who held false beliefs about the risks of vaccines (Study 1) and the 2020 US Election being rigged (Study 2), those with higher IH explored more information opposing these false beliefs. This exploration of opposing information, in turn, predicted updating away from these inaccurate health and political beliefs. IH did not directly predict updating away from false beliefs, however, suggesting that this effect—if it exists—may not be particularly powerful. Taken together, these results provide moderate support for IH as a character trait that can foster belief revision but, simultaneously, suggest that alternate pathways to combat false beliefs and misinformation may be preferred.
Preventive health practices have been crucial to mitigating viral spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. In two studies, we examined whether intellectual humility—openness to one's existing knowledge being inaccurate—related to greater engagement in preventive health practices (social distancing, handwashing, mask-wearing). In Study 1, we found that intellectually humble people were more likely to engage in COVID-19 preventive practices. Additionally, this link was driven by intellectually humble people's tendency to adopt information from data-driven sources (e.g., medical experts) and greater feelings of responsibility over the outcomes of COVID-19. In Study 2, we found support for these relationships over time (2 weeks). Additionally, Study 2 showed that the link between intellectual humility and preventive practices was driven by a greater tendency to adopt data-driven information when encountering it, rather than actively seeking out such information. These findings reveal the promising role of intellectual humility in making well-informed decisions during public health crises.
Grossmann, Igor; Rotella, Amanda, Hutcherson, Cendri A., Sharpinskyi, Konstantyn, Varnum, Michael E. W., Achter, Sebastian, Dhami, Mandeep K., Guo, Xinqi Evie, Kara-Yakoubian, Mane, Mandel, David R., Raes, Louis, Tay, Louis, Vie, Aymeric, Wagner, Lisa, Adamkovic, Matus, Arami, Arash, Arriaga, Patrícia, Bandara, Kasun, Baník, Gabriel, Bartoš, František, Baskin, Ernest, Bergmeir, Christoph, Białek, Michał, Børsting, Caroline K., Browne, Dillon T., Caruso, Eugene M., Chen, Rong, Chie, Bin-Tzong, Chopik, William J., Collins, Robert N., Cong, Chin Wen, Conway, Lucian G., Davis, Matthew, Day, Martin V., Dhaliwal, Nathan A., Durham, Justin D., Dziekan, Martyna, Elbaek, Christian T., Shuman, Eric, Fabrykant, Marharyta, Firat, Mustafa, Fong, Geoffrey T., Frimer, Jeremy A., Gallegos, Jonathan M., Goldberg, Simon B., Gollwitzer, Anton, Goyal, Julia, Graf-Vlachy, Lorenz, Gronlund, Scott D., Hafenbrädl, Sebastian, Hartanto, Andree, Hirshberg, Matthew J., Hornsey, Matthew J., Howe, Piers D. L., Izadi, Anoosha, Jaeger, Bastian, Kačmár, Pavol, Kim, Yeun Joon, Krenzler, Ruslan, Lannin, Daniel G., Lin, Hung-Wen, Lou, Nigel Mantou, Lua, Verity Y. Q., Lukaszewski, Aaron W., Ly, Albert L., Madan, Christopher R., Maier, Maximilian, Majeed, Nadyanna M., March, David S., Marsh, Abigail A., Misiak, Michal, Myrseth, Kristian Ove R., Napan, Jaime M., Nicholas, Jonathan, Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos, O, Jiaqing, Otterbring, Tobias, Paruzel-Czachura, Mariola, Pauer, Shiva, Protzko, John, Raffaelli, Quentin, Ropovik, Ivan, Ross, Robert M., Roth, Yefim, Røysamb, Espen, Schnabel, Landon, Schütz, Astrid, Seifert, Matthias, Sevincer, A.T., Sherman, Garrick T., Simonsson, Otto, Sung, Ming-Chien, Tai, Chung-Ching, Talhelm, Thomas, Teachman, Bethany A., Tetlock, Philip E., Thomakos, Dimitrios, Tse, Dwight C. K., Twardus, Oliver J., Tybur, Joshua M., Ungar, Lyle, Vandermeulen, Daan, Vaughan Williams, Leighton, Vosgerichian, Hrag A., Wang, Qi, Wang, Ke, Whiting, Mark E., Wollbrant, Conny E., Yang, Tao, Yogeeswaran, Kumar, Yoon, Sangsuk, Alves, Ventura R., Andrews-Hanna, Jessica R., Bloom, Paul A., Boyles, Anthony, Charis, Loo, Choi, Mingyeong, Darling-Hammond, Sean, Ferguson, Z.E., Kaiser, Cheryl R., Karg, Simon T., Ortega, Alberto López, Mahoney, Lori, Marsh, Melvin S., Martinie, Marcellin F. R. C., Michaels, Eli K., Millroth, Philip, Naqvi, Jeanean B., Ng, Weiting, Rutledge, Robb B., Slattery, Peter, Smiley, Adam H., Strijbis, Oliver, Sznycer, Daniel, Tsukayama, Eli, van Loon, Austin, Voelkel, Jan G., Wienk, Margaux N. A. & Wilkening, Tom (2023)
Insights into the accuracy of social scientists’ forecasts of societal change
How well can social scientists predict societal change, and what processes underlie their predictions? To answer these questions, we ran two forecasting tournaments testing the accuracy of predictions of societal change in domains commonly studied in the social sciences: ideological preferences, political polarization, life satisfaction, sentiment on social media, and gender–career and racial bias. After we provided them with historical trend data on the relevant domain, social scientists submitted pre-registered monthly forecasts for a year (Tournament 1; N = 86 teams and 359 forecasts), with an opportunity to update forecasts on the basis of new data six months later (Tournament 2; N = 120 teams and 546 forecasts). Benchmarking forecasting accuracy revealed that social scientists’ forecasts were on average no more accurate than those of simple statistical models (historical means, random walks or linear regressions) or the aggregate forecasts of a sample from the general public (N = 802). However, scientists were more accurate if they had scientific expertise in a prediction domain, were interdisciplinary, used simpler models and based predictions on prior data.
Gollwitzer, Anton; Martel, Cameron, Heinecke, Anna & Bargh, John A. (2022)
We propose that deviancy aversion—people’s domain-general discomfort toward the distortion of patterns (repeated forms or models)—contributes to the strength and prevalence of social norms in society. Five studies (N = 2,390) supported this hypothesis. In Study 1, individuals’ deviancy aversion, for instance, their aversion toward broken patterns of simple geometric shapes, predicted negative affect toward norm violations (affect), greater self-reported norm following (behavior), and judging norms as more valuable (belief). Supporting generalizability, deviancy aversion additionally predicted greater conformity on accuracy-orientated estimation tasks (Study 2), adherence to physical distancing norms during COVID-19 (Study 3), and increased following of fairness norms (Study 4). Finally, experimentally heightening deviancy aversion increased participants’ negative affect toward norm violations and self-reported norm behavior, but did not convincingly heighten belief-based norm judgments (Study 5). We conclude that a human sensitivity to pattern distortion functions as a low-level affective process that promotes and maintains social norms in society.
Marshall, Julia; Gollwitzer, Anton & Bloom, Paul (2022)
Why do children and adults think other people punish?
We examine conspiracy beliefs in the context of misplaced certainty—certainty that is unsubstantiated by one's own or others' skepticism. A conspiracy theory held with misplaced certainty may entail, for instance, “knowing” or feeling certain that secret actors are plotting against society yet acknowledging that this claim lacks evidence or is opposed by most other people. Recent work on misplaced certainty suggests that misplaced certainty predicts and results in antisocial outcomes, including fanatical behavior in terms of aggression, determined ignorance, and adherence to extreme groups. Introducing the concept of misplaced certainty to theory and research on conspiracy theories may help identify when and why conspiracy theories lead to deleterious behavioral outcomes.
Examining the epistemic and social–cognitive structures underlying fanaticism, radicalization, and extremism should shed light on how these harmful phenomena develop and can be prevented. In nine studies (N = 3,277), we examined whether discordant knowing—felt knowledge about something that one perceives as opposed by most others—underlies fanaticism. Across multifaceted approaches, experimentally manipulating participants’ views to fall under this framework (e.g., “I am certain about X, but most other people think X is unknowable or wrong”) heightened indicators of fanaticism, including aggression, determined ignorance, and wanting to join extreme groups in the service of these views. Additional analyses found that this effect occurs via threat-based mechanisms (Studies 1–7), can be intervened on to prevent fanaticism (Study 2), is conditional on the potency of opposition (Study 3), differs from effects on extremism (Study 4), and extends to mental representations of the self (Study 5). Generalizing these findings to real-world contexts, inducing participants with discordant knowledge about the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and the morality of abortion heightened fanaticism regarding these topics (Studies 6 and 7). Additionally, antivaccine fanatics and followers of a real-world fanatical religious group exhibited greater discordant knowing than nonfanatical individuals (Studies 8 and 9). Collectively, the present studies suggest that a specific epistemic structure—discordant knowing—underlies fanaticism, and further, highlight the potential of investigating constructs like fanaticism from an epistemic social cognitive perspective.
Gollwitzer, Anton; McLoughlin, Killian, Martel, Cameron, Marshall, Julia, Höhs, Johanna & Bargh, John A. (2021)
Linking Self-Reported Social Distancing to Real-World Behavior During the COVID-19 Pandemic
