Original
Does School Debating Reduce Vulnerability to Misinformation? A Field Experiment in Poland
Abstract
The idea that debating enhances political knowledge and critical thinking has been entertained by scholars of democracy for a long time. Given recent concern about a crisis of misinformation, we explore the idea that debating makes people less vulnerable to misinformation and conspiracy thinking. In a field experiment, we recruited high school students in 18 schools in Poland (n=430) and assigned them to either a debate workshop or a control condition. Before and after the workshop period, we asked students to indicate their belief in a set of news headlines (half of which were true, half false) and measured their degree of conspiratorial thinking. We find that debating increases, by a small amount, the accuracy of beliefs regarding news headlines, while reducing conspiracy thinking. These findings point to a great potential of school debating, which occurs naturally in many educational contexts and is easily scalable.
中文
学校辩论能否减少对错误信息的易感性？来自波兰的一项实地实验
摘要
长期以来，民主理论学者一直设想辩论能够增进政治知识与批判性思维。鉴于近来对错误信息危机的担忧，我们探讨了辩论使人们更不易受错误信息与阴谋思维影响这一观点。在一项实地实验中，我们招募了波兰18所学校的高中生（n=430），并将其分配到辩论工作坊或控制条件。在工作坊前后，我们要求学生表明对一组新闻标题（一半为真、一半为假）的相信程度，并测量其阴谋论思维程度。我们发现，辩论小幅提高了对新闻标题判断的准确性，同时降低了阴谋论思维。这些发现表明，学校辩论具有巨大潜力；它在许多教育情境中自然发生，且易于推广。
关键词
学校辩论、错误信息、阴谋论思维、实地实验、政治知识、批判性思维、波兰、高中生