Confirmation Bias Towards Treatments of Depressive Disorders in Social Tagging
Condition: Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent; Depressive Episode; Depressive Disorder, Major; Depression
MeSH terms: Depression; Depressive Disorder; Depressive Disorder, Major
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The study examines whether people primarily want to confirm their prior attitudes in
      health-related information search, in an online environment using social tags for navigation.
      Participants were looking for information on the treatment of depression with antidepressants
      and psychotherapy. They were randomly assigned to two groups with either high or low
      credibility of the community who provides social tags, and two groups where participants'
      confidence in prior attitudes was heightened or lowered, and to two groups where either
      antidepressant tags were more popular or psychotherapy was more popular. The investigators
      measured attitude change toward the treatments and also navigation behavior.
    

Detailed description: 
      In health-related, Web-based information searches, people should select information in line
      with expert (vs nonexpert) information, independent of their prior attitudes and consequent
      confirmation bias.

      This study aimed to investigate confirmation bias in mental health-related information
      searches, particularly (1) if high confidence worsens confirmation bias, (2) if social tags
      eliminate the influence of prior attitudes, and (3) if people successfully distinguish high
      and low source credibility.

      In total, 520 participants of a representative sample of the German Web-based population were
      recruited via a panel company. Among them, 48.1% (250/520) participants completed the fully
      automated study. Participants provided prior attitudes about antidepressants and
      psychotherapy. The investigators manipulated (1) confidence in prior attitudes when
      participants searched for blog posts about the treatment of depression, (2) tag popularity
      -either psychotherapy or antidepressant tags were more popular, and (3) source credibility
      with banners indicating high or low expertise of the tagging community. The investigators
      measured tag and blog post selection, and treatment efficacy ratings after navigation.
    

Intervention name(s): Social Tag Popularity; Confidence in Prior Attitudes; Source Credibility
Intervention type(s): Other; Other; Other
Intervention description(s): The relative size of treatment tags in a tag cloud was either larger for antidepressant treatments or psychotherapy treatments.; Participants thought back of situations in which they were either confident or doubtful about their own knowledge. This should elicit a mindset where participants are more or less confident about their own prior attitudes.; The source credibility of the community that allegedly collected and labelled the blog posts was either high or low in terms of expertise. Either experts (high credibility) or first semester students (low credibility) did allegedly collect blog posts. This was indicated by banners on top of the navigation platform in the internet browser.
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Factorial Assignment
Masking: Double (Participant, Investigator)
Primary purpose: Health Services Research
Keywords: Depression; Mood Disorder; Information Search; Attitudes; Psychotherapy; Antidepressants