Jen’s post last week (and subsequent question on OPIEWeb) about information literacy raised other questions for me. Most of us active in the real world are constantly making judgments about the trustworthy-ness and accuracy of information. It is a skill that researchers employ when they look at prior research. It’s employed by HR when they call in references for a new hire or respond to complaints. Managers have to balance what they know about an individual and their work habits along with the reasons for particular requests. Police and journalists may be the most familiar with the process of weeding out who is a good source of reliable information and who isn’t.

Writing about these events makes them seem momentous and noteworthy, but for the most part they are snap decisions we may not even be aware of. While Christmas shopping online I went to investigate a deal I found on a site I trust, only to decide I didn’t trust the site being advertised. Why? How? Was I correct in my assessment? I may never know, and likewise, that retailer may never know either.

The real question for me though comes down to 2 central questions:

1. How do we gauge our own ability to discern the reliable from the unreliable
2. How do we get better

My guess is that, like driving, everyone assumes that they are “above average” at rating the accuracy of the information they receive. Like driving, we have also grown passive in our appreciation for what a complex and important task it is that we are performing. We have so much information dropped on our doorstep that we may be losing the skills needed to go out and actively hunt for quality data.

I watch in agony as smart people are duped by unscrupulous emails, instantly forwarding them to everyone they know and posting the payload on Facebook like they alone hold the key to the sob story contained within. A cottage industry of spammers, virus writers and scammers exists to take advantage of our inability to judge the sources of our information. Certain television programs use this to great effect when they raise “concerns” in one show and report on “concerns being raised” in another creating a feedback loop of self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is the part of the blog where I would point out the reputation system and overarching mission of OPIEWeb to take over the world, serve as a trusted and reliable information source to the communities actively researching and practicing the psychology of work. I’m not going to do that this time. Instead I am going to give you, my readers (yes, both of you), a mission of your own: Go forth and raise the bar for information reliability assessments by questioning your own sources of information and get others to question what they are being told more often. My hope is that the students, readers, employers and employees alike that we interact with can all take a more skeptical eye towards their email inboxes, the nightly news and the Wikipedia articles they like to quote in arguments.