We often come across information about scientific topics in our everyday lives without consciously looking for it: We come across posts on social networks about healthy eating, vaccinations, or disease prevention, for example, or we ask AI chatbots like Chat-GPT about them. However, the fact that we find scientific information does not mean that we analyse it intensively and critically. On the contrary, psychological research shows that we tend to process information only superficially, especially when posts appeal to our emotions - by arousing our curiosity or focussing on a controversy (Kahnemann, 2011). However, there is some evidence that emotions are not always detrimental when it comes to thinking about science. In fact, emotions can sometimes help us to engage more deeply with a topic and deepen our knowledge of it (Vogl et al., 2020).
The project "Harnessing Emotion: Enhancing Deliberative Engagement with Science on Social Media and through GenAI" takes a fresh look at this problem, bringing together expertise from Israel and Lower Saxony.
In order to explore the connections between emotions and information processing in more detail, the project will conduct a series of studies to investigate people's emotional reactions when dealing with scientific information using various methods. "We ask test subjects to say out loud what they feel and think while reading posts about health topics on social media. Their facial expressions are also recorded to measure their emotions. The depth of information processing is made measurable with eye movements," says Dr. Friederike Hendriks, project manager at TU Braunschweig.
The aim of the project is not only to explain how emotions can influence how deeply people engage with scientific information that they encounter on social media or through AI chatbots. It also aims to develop a training programme that shows how an AI chatbot can be used not only as a provider of information, but also as a supportive coach and partner in the critical evaluation of scientific information. In this way, we want to encourage people to engage more effectively with health topics on the internet.
Dr. Friederike Hendriks (Technische Universität Braunschweig)
Dr. Ilana Dubovi (Tel Aviv University)
Dr. Iris Tabak (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
