Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In two experiments, we experimentally manipulated people's subjective opinions about new wellness trends using positive clips from publicly available YouTube videos. Participants spontaneously judged novel statements that were consistent with their new opinion to be factual, despite the fact that they had encountered no direct evidence for any of the statements. Belief change was stronger among participants whose opinions were more swayed by the manipulation. Positive opinions also biased participants' curiosity such that they were highly motivated to learn more about opinion-congruent statements. In Study 2, participants reported false memories for the opinion-congruent statements within the video. These results illustrate the primary role of subjective opinions in belief formation about objective truths, and suggest that the eradication of misinformation is an incomplete solution for societal disagreements.