A Comparison of Prebunking and Debunking Interventions for Implied versus Explicit Misinformation

Abstract

Psychological research has offered valuable insights into how to combat misinformation. The studies conducted to date, however, have three limitations. First, pre-emptive (“prebunking”) and retroactive (“debunking”) interventions have mostly been examined in parallel, and thus it is unclear which of these two predominant approaches is more effective. Second, there has been a focus on misinformation that is explicitly false, but misinformation that uses literally true information to mislead is common in the real world. Finally, studies have relied mainly on questionnaire measures of reasoning, neglecting behavioural impacts of misinformation and interventions. To offer incremental progress towards addressing these three issues, we conducted an experiment (N = 735) involving misinformation on fair trade. We contrasted the effectiveness of prebunking versus debunking and the impacts of implied versus explicit misinformation, and incorporated novel measures assessing consumer behaviours (i.e., willingness-to-pay; information seeking; online misinformation promotion) in addition to standard questionnaire measures. In general, we found debunking to be more effective than prebunking, although both were able to reduce misinformation reliance. We also found that individuals tended to rely more on explicit than implied misinformation both with and without interventions.

Don’t Believe Them! Reducing Misinformation Influence Through Source Discreditation

“…The observed efficacy of source discreditation demonstrates that individuals consider source characteristics when evaluating messages, consistent with research on the influence of source credibility on misinformation belief (Nadarevic et al, 2020;Swire et al, 2017;Zhu et al, 2010). The finding that the combination of correction and discreditation provided the most effective debunking corroborates recommendations for approaches that incorporate both strategies (MacFarlane et al, 2021;Paynter et al, 2019;Tay et al, 2022;Westbrook et al, 2023).…”

“…A study by Westbrook et al (2023) found that not only did a correction affect the perceived credibility of a misinformation source (also see Campos-Castillo & Shuster, 2021), but adding an explicit source discreditation made a correction more effective. This is in line with a number of other investigations that included source discreditation alongside contentfocussed corrections as an element of a successful debunking intervention (e.g., MacFarlane et al, 2021;Paynter et al, 2019;Tay et al, 2022). A recent study conducted in a simulated social-media environment found that the presence of source-credibility information boosted participants' discernment between true and false social-media posts (Prike, Butler, et al, 2023).…”

Why Misinformation Must Not Be Ignored

“…With regards to observable behaviors, ethical concerns surrounding exposure of research participants to potentially harmful misinformation (Greene et al, 2023) limit experimenters' ability to ascertain impacts. Studies that have tested for direct behavioral impacts have therefore mostly done so with relatively innocuous measures and have produced mixed findings (e.g., Hamby et al, 2020;MacFarlane et al, 2021;Spampatti et al, 2023;Tay et al, 2022; for reviews in the context of health misinformation, see Borges do Nascimento et al, 2022;Schmid et al, 2023). Such constraints do not apply in the real world.…”

Understanding the efficacy of provenance interventions for tackling misinformation

“…Several studies have also compared the relative efficacy of prebunking, labelling, and debunking, generally concurring that debunking most effectively decreases participants' reliance on misinformation (Tay et al 2021) and improves their ability to distinguish true and false content to the greatest degree (Brashier et al 2021). Moreover, while some early work on factchecking warned that it could trigger so-called 'backfire effects' whereby fact-checks further entrenched and fortified, rather than reduced, misperceptions, recent meta-analyses find scant evidence substantiating 'backfire effects' theory, which Swire-Thompson, DeGutis, and Lazer (2020, 289) characterise as 'not an empirically robust phenomenon.'…”