Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media

Roozenbeek, Jon; Linden, Sander van der; Goldberg, Beth; Rathje, Steve; Lewandowsky, Stephan

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo6254

Cited by 171 publications

(186 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…People's attitudes towards topics in science hinge on factors most scientists do not view as objectively relevant to how we should understand the evidential quality of a piece of scientific research. For example, it has been established that perceptions of scientific consensus shape how people evaluate a piece of science (Cook & Lewandowsky, 2016;Imundo & Rapp, 2022;Roozenbeek, van der Linden, Goldberg, Rathje, & Lewandowsky, 2022;Van der Linden et al, 2019). "Gateway beliefs" to climate attitudes and perceptions of consensus play a pivotal role in shaping how evidence for climate change is integrated into people's belief systems.…”

Section: Implications For Intervention Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bayesian decision-theoretic framework for studying motivated reasoning

Priniski¹,

Solanki²,

Horne³

2022

Preprint

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Psychological, political, cultural, and sociological factors shape how people form and revise their beliefs. An established finding across these fields is that people are motivated to hold onto their beliefs even in the face of evidence by ignoring or reinterpreting information in a way that supports what they think. Although these and similar findings are compelling, the predominantly qualitative theories which guide research in this domain, and the often implicit definitions of motivation that accompany these theories, come at the cost of obscuring the cognitive mechanisms that produce motivated reasoning. Here, we introduce a new Bayesian decision-theoretic framework which describes three key factors necessary for distinguishing between cases of practically rational behavior and motivated reasoning. We demonstrate how the framework works in a series of simulations and argue that it provides guidance about what psychologists need to measure to determine where the errors in people's reasoning are occurring when they fail to revise their beliefs in light of new evidence. We then propose that this framework provides guidance for thinking about the development of interventions aimed at correcting misconceptions.

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Section: Implications For Intervention Developmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bayesian decision-theoretic framework for studying motivated reasoning

Priniski¹,

Solanki²,

Horne³

2022

Preprint

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“…There are only a few studies of this kind that demonstrated measurable effects in media truth discernment after one month. Among these attempts, only a few met the important criteria of scalability (Guess et al, 2020;Roozenbeek et al, 2022). We based our intervention on this work and aimed to modify it in a way that might strengthen the long-term effects in digitally vulnerable groups, such as pro-Orbán conservatives.…”

Section: Study 2 a Prosocial Intervention To Motivate Eastern Europea...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-lasting Effects of a Prosocial Counter-Misinformation Intervention in an Informational Autocracy

Orosz

Faragó

Paskuj

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Conservative voters have difficulties distinguishing fake from real news. In Hungarian representative data (N = 991) we found voters of the reigning populist, conservative party rated misinformation more accurate than real ones independently from the news’ political leaning and content. The question arises: what can psychological science do to make government supporters more motivated and capable in the long run to identify misinformation in this cultural, political, and historical context? Designing scalable misinformation-reducing interventions that have a sustainable effect in the long term is a challenge researchers are struggling to surmount. The present work demonstrates a social psychological randomized controlled trial intervention in which young adults (N = 473) were placed in an expert role and were requested to write a letter to digitally less competent relatives explaining six strategies that can help them to discern misinformation. Compared to the active control group, there was an immediate (d = 0.27) and four weeks later a general long-term effect (d = 0.30) on distinguishing fake news from real ones. This long-term effect was especially salient among participants who support the conservative populist government (d = 0.48). The present work is among the first providing comprehensive quantitative analysis on the gravity of the misinformation problem in an Eastern European country with a pioneering intervention attempt that can be appropriate to a context where misinformation appears regularly in the mainstream media.

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“…Inoculation 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 and other forms of digital media literacy interventions 8,14,15,17,20,21,22,23,24,25 similarly struggle to produce reliable long-term effects.…”

Section: Fake-news Interventions Scalability and Long-term Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The question therefore is: what could sustain the desired change in news consumption behaviors? We suggest that prosocial motivations can contribute more (e.g., 29,30 ) than those, predominantly individual intellect-related drivers (e.g., 16 ), that the above approaches try to leverage. We root our psychological intervention in the richly understood prosocial motives of our post-socialist Hungarian sample.…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

“…Psychological interventions looking to arm people against misinformation have largely followed three strategies to date. They either encouraged people to consume news with higher vigilance using nudges 1,2,3,4,5,6 , reduced susceptibility to misinformation by informing them about how they can be misinformed (inoculation 7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20 ), or focused on developing digital media literacy 8,14,15,17,19,21,22,23,24,25 . The first strategy encourages more deliberative news consumption, which is very important in an age when the majority of people consume news through social media 26 that deliberately serves selfaffirming content to users to increase the time spent on the platform 27 .…”

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confidence: 99%

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A Prosocial Fake News Intervention with Durable Effects

Orosz¹,

Paskuj²,

Faragó³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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In contrast to prior individuum-focused interventions, the online randomized controlled trial presented here motivated young adults through family bonds to build resistance against fake news. This preregistered study is the first psychological fake news intervention in Eastern Europe, where the free press is weak and state-sponsored misinformation runs riot in mainstream media. In this intervention, participants were endowed with an expert role and requested to write a letter to their digitally less competent relatives explaining six strategies that help fake news recognition. Compared to the active control group there was an immediate effect (d=0.32) that persisted until the follow-up four weeks later (d=0.22) on fake news accuracy ratings. The intervention also reduced the bullshit receptivity of participants both immediately after the intervention and in the long run. The present work demonstrates the power of using relevant social bonds for motivating behavior change among Eastern Europeans. Our prosocial approach with its robust grounding in human psychology can open up new avenues in the fight against misinformation but we hold that leveraging these familial bonds could be the foundation of other behavior change efforts in the region.

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Psychological inoculation improves resilience against misinformation on social media

Cited by 171 publications

References 54 publications

A Bayesian decision-theoretic framework for studying motivated reasoning

A Bayesian decision-theoretic framework for studying motivated reasoning

Long-lasting Effects of a Prosocial Counter-Misinformation Intervention in an Informational Autocracy

A Prosocial Fake News Intervention with Durable Effects

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