Communication can be very usefully studied with an evolutionary lens. One of the main predictions of evolutionary models of communication is that both those who produce communication and those who receive it should, on average, benefit from it.
For receivers, that means not being gullible, but instead being able to discriminate beneficial from harmful messages. In Not Born Yesterday I've reviewed the literature from many different fields, from political science to anthropology, showing that this is indeed the case: it's much harder to deceive people than we usually think, and mass communication in particular is surprisingly ineffective. We've also done experimental work showing that people can be very good at evaluating how knowledgeable different speakers are.
As for those who produce communication, with colleagues we've argued that they often benefit through an improved reputation, whether they appear nice when they share 'happy thoughts,' or competent when they avoid sharing fake news.
MAIN REFERENCES
Mercier, H. Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust And What We Believe. Princeton University Press.
Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G. & Wilson, D. Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language.
COMMUNICATION EVALUATION
Altay, S., Hacquin, A., Chevallier, C. , & Mercier, H . Information delivered by a chatbot has a positive impact on COVID-19 vaccines attitudes and intentions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. (coverage STAT, Pour la Science, France Info, review in Rapid Reviews)
Dubourg, E., Dheilly, T., Mercier, H., & Morin, O. People use the nested structure of knowledge to infer what others know. Psychological Science. (coverage Spektrum)
Pfänder, J., De Courson, B., & Mercier, H. How wise is the crowd? Can we infer people are accurate and competent merely because they agree with each other? Cognition.
Weber, V., & Mercier, H. When do people dislike self-enhancers? When they claim to be superior. Pragmatics and Cognition.
Karabegovic, M., & Mercier, H. The reputational benefits of intellectual humility. Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
Simon, F. M., Altay, S., & Mercier, H. Misinformation reloaded? Fears about the impact of generative AI on misinformation are overblown. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. (coverage Wired; Internal Exile)
McKay, R. & Mercier, H. Delusions as epistemic hypervigilance. Current Directions in Psychological Science.
Acerbi, A., Altay, S., & Mercier, H. Fighting misinformation or fighting for information? Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review. (coverage Futura Sciences, NiemanLab, rfi)
Altay, S., Majima, Y. & Mercier, H. It’s my idea! Reputation management and idea appropriation. Evolution and Human Behavior.
Altay, S., & Mercier, H. Relevance is socially rewarded, but not at the price of accuracy. Evolutionary Psychology.
Mercier, H., & Miton, H. Utilizing simple cues to informational dependency. Evolution and Human Behavior.
Mercier, H. & Morin, O. Majority rules: how good are we at aggregating convergent opinions? Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Trouche, E., Johansson, P., Hall, L. & Mercier, H. Vigilant conservatism in evaluating communicated information. PLoS One.
Mercier, H. How gullible are we? A review of the evidence from psychology and social science. Review of General Psychology.
Vullioud, C., Clément, F., Scott-Phillips, T. & Mercier, H. Confidence as an expression of commitment: Why misplaced expressions of confidence backfire. Evolution and Human Behavior.
Terrier, N., Bernard, S., Mercier, H., & Clément, F. Visual access trumps gender in 3- and 4-year-old children’s endorsement of testimony. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Dezecache, G., Mercier, H. & Scott-Phillips, T. An evolutionary approach on emotional communication. Journal of Pragmatics.
Mercier, H., Yama, H., Kawasaki, Y., Adachi, K. & Van der Henst, J-B. Is the use of averaging in advice taking modulated by culture? Journal of Cognition and Culture.
Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascaro, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G. & Wilson, D. Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language.
Mercier, H. & Altay, S. Do cultural misbeliefs cause costly behavior? In Musolino, J., Hemmer, P. & Sommer, J. (Eds.) The Cognitive Science of Belief: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Cambridge University Press.
Mercier, H. How good are we at evaluating communicated information? In Baggini, J. (Ed.) How Do We Know? The Social Dimension of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press
Dezecache, G., & Mercier, H. Emotional vigilance. In Shackelford, T. & Al-Shawaf, L. (Eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Evolution and the Emotions. Oxford University Press.
Mercier, H. Our pigheaded core: How we became smarter to be influenced by other people. In Calcott, B., Joyce, R. & Sterelny, K. (Eds.) Evolution, Cooperation, and Complexity. MIT Press.
COMMUNICATION PRODUCTION
Karabegović, M., Wang, L., Boyer, P., Mercier, H. Epistemic gratitude and the provision of information. Evolution and Human Behavior.
Altay, S., Hacquin, AS. & Mercier, H. Why do so few people share fake news? It hurts their reputation. New Media and Society.
Altay, S., de Araujo, E. & Mercier, H. “If this account is true, it is most enormously wonderful”: Interestingness-if-true and the sharing of true and false news. Digital Journalism. (coverage Taiwan FactCheck Center, RQ1)
Altay, S., Majima, Y & Mercier, H. Happy thoughts: The role of communion in accepting and sharing epistemically suspect beliefs. British Journal of Social Psychology.
de Araujo, E., Altay, S. , Bor, A., & Mercier, H. Dominant jerks: Sharing offensive statements can be used to demonstrate dominance. Social Psychological Bulletin.
Mercier, H., Majima, Y., Claidière, N., Léone, J. (2019) Obstacles to the spread of unintuitive beliefs. Evolutionary Human Sciences.
Mercier, H., Dezecache, G. & Scott-Phillips, T. Strategically communicating minds. Current Directions in Psychological Science.