The Influence of Collective Opinion on True-False Judgment and Information-Sharing Decision

How does the collective opinion of crowds influence people’s credibility judgment and sharing likelihood of health-related statements in social media? The work reported here addressed this question through two experiments. The results of Experiment 1 revealed that the crowd adopted the collective credibility judgment when evaluating the credibility of a statement. Similarly, the results of Experiment 2 showed that the crowd followed the collective sharing likelihood when rating the likelihood of sharing a statement. This social influence took place for statements that were perceived as true, debatable, and false, indicating that the effect of collective opinion was strong.

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