Dealing with conflicting or consistent medical information on the web: When expert information breeds laypersons' doubts about experts

The present study investigated how dealing with conflicting versus consistent medical information on the Web impacts on topic-specific and medicine-related epistemic beliefs as well as aspects of health decision making. One hundred mostly female university students were randomly assigned to three groups. Two intervention groups searched the Web for information on cholesterol to advise a fictitious friend about treatment. Pre-selected websites for these groups provided either conflicting or consistent information. The third group, the control group, did not conduct Web search. Results showed that the intervention groups differed in topic-specific epistemic beliefs. After the Web search, their medicine-related epistemic beliefs were more advanced while remaining unchanged in controls. The intervention groups also differed in some aspects of decision making.