Overview
One of the major purposes of social media—and the Internet more broadly—is sharing information. But not all information that gets shared is reliable. Quality information is hard to come by.
Even a site like LinkedIn, where professionals connect and share information to benefit each other’s careers, is plagued by cringy platitudes and AI-generated SEO slop. Might sharing something more substantive make you look more competent?
Science could be the answer. In an age of misinformation and disinformation, many people are turning to outlets that use rigorous research methodologies and transparently report their findings. Sharing information that comes from such sources may just enhance your image, as well as the quality of information your friends and colleagues use.
In this experiment, a randomized controlled trial, we tested whether sharing a science article enhances the image of the information sharer relative to a non-scientific source or one’s own personal experience. We also tested whether such information is appreciated broadly, or primarily by those with higher levels of education.
The Experiment
We created a LinkedIn post about effective listening in the workplace and shared it with 1,200 online participants from Prolific. Unbeknownst to participants, we photoshopped the LinkedIn post into one of the following three variations, then randomly assigned which version they saw:
(a) a link to an article from the hypothetical academic journal, “Communication Science,”
(b) a link to an article from a hypothetical advice website “Communication Advice,” or
(c) a text-based post with the person’s own thoughts and experiences.
After reading the post, we asked participants a series of survey questions to measure our outcomes of interest. Each participants rated how smart and how nice the poster seemed, as well as the extent to which they trusted the information being shared, all using 1-7 survey scales. At the end of the study, we also asked participants to report their political beliefs and levels of education so we could test whether the results differ based on these two variables.
For political beliefs, participants were asked "Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or something else?" with answer options "Republican," "Democrat," "Independent," "No preference," and "Other."
For education, participants were asked, “What is the highest educational degree you have obtained?” with answer options “No degrees obtained," "High school diploma or equivalent," "Some college credit," "Trade/technical/vocational training," "Associate degree," "Bachelor’s degree," "Master’s degree," or "Doctorate."
For political beliefs, participants were asked "Generally speaking, do you usually think of yourself as a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent, or something else?" with answer options "Republican," "Democrat," "Independent," "No preference," and "Other."
For education, participants were asked, “What is the highest educational degree you have obtained?” with answer options “No degrees obtained," "High school diploma or equivalent," "Some college credit," "Trade/technical/vocational training," "Associate degree," "Bachelor’s degree," "Master’s degree," or "Doctorate."
Results
Sharing science does seem to boost your image, albeit slightly. We found a 6.6% increase in how smart our science article sharer seemed (avg. = 5.23) relative to our advice article sharer (avg. = 4.91), and a 4.6% increase relative to our text-poster who only shared his own thoughts (avg. = 5.00), (p = 0.001). Our science article sharer was also perceived to be 4.6% nicer than our advice article sharer, though this effect was closer to the margin of error (p = 0.037) and there was no statistically significant difference relative to our text-post thoughts sharer (p = 0.469).
In terms of trust, readers trusted the science article 8.1% more (avg. = 4.61) than the advice article (avg. = 4.27), (p < 0.001). Interestingly, however, people did not trust the science article more than the simple text post (avg. = 4.71), (p = 0.292). To investigate this finding, we analyzed the results by political beliefs and education levels to see if trust in science is moderated by either of these two variables.
Although the results did not differ by political beliefs (p = 0.247), we did find a marginal difference in the results when considering education (p = 0.054). As participants’ education levels increased, trust in the text post decreased while trust in the science article increased. For each additional point increase in our eight-point education variable, respondents trusted the science article 0.10 points more (1-7 scale) than the simple text post.
Conclusion
Sharing information with others that is backed by science does more than just enhance the quality of your information. It also enhances your image, albeit slightly. At least for LinkedIn, posting research-backed articles makes you appear a bit smarter, and may even increase trust in the information you share with a highly educated audience.
Methods Note
For our analyses, Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analyses were used to test for significant differences in perceived competence, perceived warmth, and trust in the information shared between our three LinkedIn posts. OLS regression analyses with interaction terms were used to test whether the results differed based on political beliefs or education. Our statistical significance threshold was a p-value below 0.05.
Additional details are available on our methodology page. Data and survey materials are available upon request.