Psychological Underpinnings of Disinformation Countermeasures: A Systematic Scoping Review

Abstract

There has been a substantial scholarly effort to (a) investigate the psychological underpinnings of disinformation susceptibility, and (b) develop interventions that hamper their credibility and spread. However, a systematic review of intervention research is still lacking. We conducted a systematic scoping review of psychological interventions to counteract disinformation (N = 176) and categorized boosting, inoculation, identity management, nudging, and fact-checking interventions. We examined how these interventions are theoretically derived from the two most prominent psychological accounts for disinformation susceptibility: classical and motivated reasoning. Most studies focused on fact-checking interventions, have been poorly linked to basic psychological theory and are not geared towards reducing motivated reasoning. Based on our review, we outline future avenues for research on psychological countermeasures against disinformation.

Effects of fact‐checking warning labels and social endorsement cues on climate change fake news credibility and engagement on social media

“…There are increasing attempts to reduce the noxious effects of fake news with countermeasures implemented on social media platforms. Despite an increased research interest in these measures, they are seldom tested in concert, embedded in a theoretical background, and studied while accounting for interindividual differences in cognitive and attitudinal variables (Ziemer & Rothmund, 2022). The current study contributed to closing this gap.…”

“…Social media platforms often combine different strategies to combat fake news, but studies on potential interactions between interventions are rare (Bak‐Coleman et al, 2022; Ziemer & Rothmund, 2022). Furthermore, these studies often test either the interplay of different heuristics or the combination of measures targeted towards fostering systematic processing.…”

“…While the cognitive variables shape the likelihood of engaging in systematic processing (elaboration likelihood model, Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), the attitudinal variables shape motivational processing (Kunda, 1990). Thus, both types of variables should be considered in research about countermeasures (Ziemer & Rothmund, 2022).…”

“…Thus, removing social endorsement cues could actively contribute to reducing the spread of fake news. However, interaction effects between different countermeasures have gained comparatively little academic interest so far (for a systematic review, see Ziemer & Rothmund, 2022).…”

“…We judged the effectiveness of these interventions by examining users' perceived credibility of fake news and their likelihood to amplify fake news posts versus elaborating on them more carefully. Furthermore, we accounted for mounting evidence suggesting that the response to fake news depends on two central psychological characteristics: First, people's cognitive styles, such that those with a more superficial, heuristic processing style are more prone to fall for fake news, and, second, the attitudinal consistency between their worldviews and the fake news, that is, their motivational processing of fake news' content (for a systematic review, see Ziemer & Rothmund, 2022). Thus, we controlled our analyses for a set of socio‐demographic and psychological dispositions mirroring these two dimensions based on prior research (e.g., Guess et al, 2019; Pennycook & Rand, 2020).…”