Overview
Shane Littrell is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto and a member of the Media Ecosystem Observatory (MEO), where he was survey lead for a large-scale tracking study examining how online news, misinformation, and interference from foreign actors influence the political attitudes and behaviors of Canadian citizens, as well as how these phenomena impact the overall health of democracy.
His research focuses primarily on investigating the ways in which misleading information – such as conspiracy theories and political propaganda – can influence people’s beliefs, attitudes, and decisions. His work looks not only at how people think about and evaluate external information, but also at how we think about and evaluate our own internal thought processes (known as “metacognition”), including our ability to recognize and correct the reasoning errors and other cognitive mishaps that may lead us to fall for epistemically-dubious information. His goal is to create research that will help people and policymakers become better critical thinkers who can more quickly “detect and reject” misleading information before it can negatively impact their lives and the lives of others.
Shane received his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON, Canada and a Master of Science degree in Experimental Psychology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He has held previous postdoctoral positions at the Department of Political Science at University of Miami and the Department of Human Development at Teachers College, Columbia University. His research has been covered by several popular international media outlets including Forbes, The Guardian, CBC News, Global News, Bloomberg News, Vice.com, Inc.com, and Psychology Today.
