Trust, Perception, and Deepfakes

This unit examines how human perception and cognitive biases create vulnerabilities to deception, with a focus on deepfakes and media manipulation. Students will investigate common perceptual and trust biases, analyze real-world detection failures, run a small experiment to measure susceptibility, and prepare evidence-based recommendations to reduce organizational risk.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze at least three cognitive biases (e.g., trust bias, confirmation bias, availability heuristic) and explain how each influences individual and organizational decision-making in response to audiovisual misinformation
• Evaluate common deepfake techniques and perceptual cues by comparing at least two synthetic-media examples and identifying at least four indicators of manipulation
• Apply critical media-literacy and technical screening strategies to assess authenticity by performing structured evaluations of multimedia samples and documenting reliability scores
• Design and conduct a small, controlled experiment to measure susceptibility to a selected deepfake stimulus, summarize results in a written brief, and propose at least two policy or practice recommendations to mitigate risk