Refutations of Equivocal Claims: No Evidence for an Ironic Effect of Counterargument Number

Abstract

This study investigated the refutation of equivocal claims using counterarguments. Common sense suggests that more counterarguments should be more effective at inducing belief change.However, some researchers have argued that in persuasive reasoning, using too many arguments might lead to counterproductive skepticism and reactance. Thus, there have been calls to actively curtail the number of counterarguments used in refutations to avoid risking an "overkill backfire effect"-an ironic strengthening of beliefs from too many counterarguments. In three experiments, we tested whether calls to limit the number of counterarguments are justified. We found that a larger number of counterarguments (between four and six) led to as much or more belief reduction compared to a smaller number of (two) counterarguments. This was not merely an effect arising from a simple numerosity heuristic, as counterarguments had to be relevant to affect beliefs: irrelevant counterarguments failed to reduce beliefs even though perceived as moderately persuasive.

You don’t have to tell a story! A registered report testing the effectiveness of narrative versus non-narrative misinformation corrections

“…Given the omnipresence of misinformation, it is of great importance to investigate the factors that make corrections more effective. For example, corrections are more effective if they come from a more credible source (Ecker and Antonio 2020 ; Guillory and Geraci 2013 ; Vraga et al 2020 ), contain greater detail (Chan et al 2017 ; Swire et al 2017 ), or a greater number of counterarguments (Ecker et al 2019 ). However, even optimized debunking messages typically cannot eliminate the continued influence of misinformation, not even if reasoning is tested immediately after a correction is provided, let alone after a delay (see Ecker et al 2010 , 2020a ; Paynter et al 2019 ; Rich and Zaragoza 2016 ; Swire et al 2017 ; Walter and Tukachinsky 2020 ).…”

How Can Psychological Science Help Counter the Spread of Fake News?

“…A plethora of research on the illusory truth effect suggests that the mere repetition of information increases its perceived truthfulness, making even successful corrections susceptible to unintended consequences (Effron & Raj, 2020;Fazio et al, 2015;Pennycook et al, 2018). Despite popular concerns about potential backfire-effects, where a correction inadvertently increases the belief in-or reliance onmisinformation itself, research has not found such effects to be commonplace (e.g., see Ecker et al, 2019;Swire-Thompson et al, 2020;Wood & Porter, 2019). Yet, there is reason to believe that debunking misinformation can still be challenging in light of both (politically) motivated cognition (Flynn et al, 2017), and the continued influence effect (CIE) where people continue to retrieve false information from memory despite acknowledging a correction (Chan et al, 2017;Lewandowsky et al, 2012;Walter & Tukachinsky, 2020).…”

When Science Denial Meets Epistemic Understanding

“…Two forms of the backfire effect cause the denial of scientific knowledge: the familiarity backfire effect (Swire et al 2017) and the overkill backfire effect (Ecker et al 2019). The familiarity backfire effect occurs when people remember misinformation rather than its inaccuracy as a result of getting exposed to misinformation frequently (Swire et al 2017).…”

“…This effect can influence the way people respond to pseudo-scientific arguments (Hansson 2017b). The overkill backfire effect occurs when people reject multiple complex scientific explanations for certain phenomena that are difficult to understand and process (Ecker et al 2019). This shows that people tend to engage in simple and easy explanations.…”