On the Efficacy of Accuracy Prompts Across Partisan Lines: An Adversarial Collaboration

Abstract

The spread of misinformation is a pressing societal challenge. Prior work shows that shifting attention to accuracy increases the quality of people’s news-sharing decisions. However, researchers disagree on whether accuracy-prompt interventions work for U.S. Republicans/conservatives and whether partisanship moderates the effect. In this preregistered adversarial collaboration, we tested this question using a multiverse meta-analysis ( k = 21; N = 27,828). In all 70 models, accuracy prompts improved sharing discernment among Republicans/conservatives. We observed significant partisan moderation for single-headline “evaluation” treatments (a critical test for one research team) such that the effect was stronger among Democrats than Republicans. However, this moderation was not consistently robust across different operationalizations of ideology/partisanship, exclusion criteria, or treatment type. Overall, we observed significant partisan moderation in 50% of specifications (all of which were considered critical for the other team). We discuss the conditions under which moderation is observed and offer interpretations.

Individual differences in sharing false political information on social media: Deliberate and accidental sharing, motivations and positive schizotypy

“…While all these approaches can work, there is evidence that interventions may not be equally useful for all individuals. For example, while attention-focusing interventions are generally seen as effective, there have been suggestions that they may be less so for some individuals with right-wing political views [12,13]. Beyond characteristics such as political orientation, the motives of individuals spreading false information are likely to be important.…”