The Internet has evolved into a ubiquitous and indispensable digital environment in which people communicate, seek information, and make decisions. Despite offering various benefits, online environments are also replete with smart, highly adaptive choice architectures designed primarily to maximize commercial interests, capture and sustain users’ attention, monetize user data, and predict and influence future behavior. This online landscape holds multiple negative consequences for society, such as a decline in human autonomy, rising incivility in online conversation, the facilitation of political extremism, and the spread of disinformation. Benevolent choice architects working with regulators may curb the worst excesses of manipulative choice architectures, yet the strategic advantages, resources, and data remain with commercial players. One way to address some of this imbalance is with interventions that empower Internet users to gain some control over their digital environments, in part by boosting their information literacy and their cognitive resistance to manipulation. Our goal is to present a conceptual map of interventions that are based on insights from psychological science. We begin by systematically outlining how online and offline environments differ despite being increasingly inextricable. We then identify four major types of challenges that users encounter in online environments: persuasive and manipulative choice architectures, AI-assisted information architectures, false and misleading information, and distracting environments. Next, we turn to how psychological science can inform interventions to counteract these challenges of the digital world. After distinguishing among three types of behavioral and cognitive interventions—nudges, technocognition, and boosts—we focus on boosts, of which we identify two main groups: (a) those aimed at enhancing people’s agency in their digital environments (e.g., self-nudging, deliberate ignorance) and (b) those aimed at boosting competencies of reasoning and resilience to manipulation (e.g., simple decision aids, inoculation). These cognitive tools are designed to foster the civility of online discourse and protect reason and human autonomy against manipulative choice architectures, attention-grabbing techniques, and the spread of false information.

互联网已经发展成为人们交流、查找信息、决策的无处不在、不可或缺的数字环境。尽管提供了各种好处，在线环境也充满了智能、高度适应性的选择架构，其设计主要是为了最大化商业利益、捕获和维持用户的注意力、将用户数据货币化以及预测和影响未来的行为。这种网络格局给社会带来了多种负面后果，例如人类自主权的下降、网络对话中不文明行为的增加、政治极端主义的助长以及虚假信息的传播。与监管机构合作的仁慈选择架构师可能会遏制最严重的过度操纵选择架构，但战略优势、资源和数据仍然属于商业参与者。解决这种不平衡的一种方法是采取干预措施，使互联网用户能够对其数字环境获得一定的控制权，部分方法是提高他们的信息素养和对操纵的认知抵抗力。我们的目标是提出基于心理科学见解的干预措施的概念图。我们首先系统地概述线上和线下环境之间的差异，尽管它们越来越密不可分。然后，我们确定了用户在在线环境中遇到的四种主要挑战：说服性和操纵性选择架构、人工智能辅助信息架构、虚假和误导性信息以及分散注意力的环境。接下来，我们转向心理科学如何为干预措施提供信息，以应对数字世界的这些挑战。在区分了三种类型的行为和认知干预措施（助推、技术认知和促进）之后，我们重点关注促进，其中我们确定了两大类：（a）旨在增强人们在数字环境中的能动性的干预（例如，自我助推） 、故意无知）和（b）旨在提高推理能力和操纵能力的那些（例如，简单的决策辅助、接种）。这些认知工具旨在促进在线话语的文明，并保护理性和人类自主权，免受操纵性选择架构、吸引注意力的技术和虚假信息传播的影响。