UNIVERSITY OF HERTFORDSHIRE
             COMPUTER SCIENCE RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM

                            presents

     
	               "How People Form Beliefs"
	

                       Prof. Tali Sharot
                (University College London)

                       15 November 2023 
                        13:00 -14:00 
                          Room 1A161

                  Everyone is Welcome to Attend
				  
				            

                              

Abstract:

In this talk I will present our recent behavioural and neuroscience research on how the brain motivates itself to form particular beliefs and why it does so. I will propose that the utility of a belief is derived from the potential outcomes associated with holding it. Outcomes can be internal (e.g., positive/negative feelings) or external (e.g., material gain/loss), and only some are dependent on belief accuracy. We show that belief change occurs when the potential outcomes of holding it alters, for example when moving from a safe environment to a threatening environment. Our findings yield predictions about how belief formation alters as a function of mental health. We test these predictions using a linguistic analysis of participants’ web searches ‘in the wild’ to quantify the affective properties of information they consume and relate those to reported psychiatric symptoms. Finally, I will present a study in which we used our framework to alter the incentive structure of social media platforms to reduce the spread of misinformation and improve belief accuracy.



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Hertfordshire Computer Science Research Colloquium
http://cs-colloq.cs.herts.ac.uk