It’s Contagious! The Effects of Gamifying Refutation Texts on Emotions and Learning

Abstract

The current study investigated the effects of gamifying refutations on emotions and learning. Refutations have a substantial body of evidence supporting their use to correct misconceptions, yet reduced efficacy has been observed for some topics that induce negative emotional reactions. We tested whether gamification could mitigate these limits given that it capitalizes on positive affective engagement. From May to December 2020, approximately 200,000 individuals were recruited from social media in Canada to engage with a non-game interactive survey as a control or a fully gamified platform focused on correcting COVID-19 misconceptions. Gamification resulted in higher levels of happiness and anxiety and lower levels of anger and skepticism in response to having misconceptions corrected by refutations. Further, participants who engaged with gamified refutations retained correct information after a brief period. Finally, positive emotions and anxiety positively predicted and negative emotions largely negatively predicted retention and support for related public health policies. Implications for scaling up and reinforcing the benefits of refutations for public engagement with science are discussed.