Introduction In the contemporary digital communication environment, online emergencies often trigger cognitive biases among audiences, affecting the health of public opinion ecosystems and potentially threatening social stability. While existing research has largely focused on the manifestations and consequences of cognitive biases, the formation mechanisms, particularly the role of contextual factors in the online environment, remain understudied. This study examines how field situational heuristics influence cognitive biases in online emergencies through the mediating pathways of adaptive expectations and implicit attributions. Methods This research integrates field theory and heuristic information processing theory to construct a theoretical framework. Using anchoring heuristics, representativeness heuristics, and availability heuristics as independent variables, cognitive bias as the dependent variable, and adaptive expectations and implicit attributions as mediating variables, data were collected through questionnaires and analyzed using structural equation modeling with AMOS 22.0 statistical software. Results The findings reveal that: (1) in online emergencies, anchoring heuristics, representativeness heuristics, and availability heuristics exert a significantly positive influence on cognitive biases, mediated by adaptive expectations and implicit attributions; (2) representativeness heuristics have the greatest impact on cognitive biases, followed by availability heuristics, and finally anchoring heuristics; (3) the effect of contextual heuristics on cognitive biases exhibits significant demographic differences both between and within groups. Discussion The findings provide theoretical insights for improving online public opinion governance and enhancing audience media literacy. The study highlights the importance of understanding how situational heuristics shape cognitive outcomes in digital communication environments and offers practical implications for managing information dissemination during online emergencies.
Peng et al. (Tue,) studied this question.