Do People Question Information Sources?

Overview

Objectives/Goals My objective was to see if 6th graders can be misled by giving them false information. Methods/Materials Materials: - Paragraph with false information about volcanoes. - Paragraph with true information about volcanoes. - Quiz on both paragraphs We had just studied volcanoes in Science, so the correct information should have been fresh in their minds. Methods: For my project I tested 28 sixth grade students. For 16 of the sixth graders I: - Made them read a paragraph with false information on volcanoes. - Asked for their age. - I gave them a quiz on the paragraph. - Corrected their quizes and record their scores. The other 12 sixth graders were my control group. The control group was given a paragraph with true information. Everything else was the same except for the paragraph they read. Results The control group did 37% better than the sixth graders who read the paragraph with the false information. The control group got an average of 4.36 out of 5. The sixth graders with the paragraph with false information got an average of 3.16 out of 5. All the people I tested were either 11 or 12 years old. In my control group the 11 year olds did better than the 12 year olds. For the kids who had the paragraph with false information, the 12 years old did better than 11 year olds. The difference there is not significant so there isn#t an advantage to the 11 or 12 year olds. Conclusions/Discussion The sixth graders were misled by the false information that I gave them. The test group assumed that this false information was true. My little passage changed what they had thought about volcanoes. So people tend to believe what is told to them. Maybe next time I could get people of different ages, more people, giving them false information in a short movie or commercial. I would like to see if people are more likely to believe a video, audio, or something you read.

Competition history

• CSEF 2013 Cognitive Science (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0705

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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