Misinformation about the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a pressing societal challenge. Across two studies, one preregistered ( n1 = 1771 and n2 = 1777), we assess the efficacy of two ‘prebunking’ interventions aimed at improving people’s ability to spot manipulation techniques commonly used in COVID-19 misinformation across three different languages (English, French and German). We find that Go Viral!, a novel five-minute browser game, (a) increases the perceived manipulativeness of misinformation about COVID-19, (b) improves people’s attitudinal certainty (confidence) in their ability to spot misinformation and (c) reduces self-reported willingness to share misinformation with others. The first two effects remain significant for at least one week after gameplay. We also find that reading real-world infographics from UNESCO improves people’s ability and confidence in spotting COVID-19 misinformation (albeit with descriptively smaller effect sizes than the game). Limitations and implications for fake news interventions are discussed.

Online misinformation is a pervasive global problem. In response, psychologists have recently explored the theory of psychological inoculation: If people are preemptively exposed to a weakened version of a misinformation technique, they can build up cognitive resistance. This study addresses two unanswered methodological questions about a widely adopted online “fake news” inoculation game, Bad News. First, research in this area has often looked at pre- and post-intervention difference scores for the same items, which may imply that any observed effects are specific to the survey items themselves (item effects). Second, it is possible that using a pretest influences the outcome variable of interest, or that the pretest may interact with the intervention (testing effects). We investigate both item and testing effects in two online studies (total N = 2,159) using the Bad News game. For the item effect, we examine if inoculation effects are still observed when different items are used in the pre- and posttest. To examine the testing effect, we use a Solomon’s Three Group Design. We find that inoculation interventions are somewhat influenced by item effects, and not by testing effects. We show that inoculation interventions are effective at improving people’s ability to spot misinformation techniques and that the Bad News game does not make people more skeptical of real news. We discuss the larger relevance of these findings for evaluating real-world psychological interventions.

The Internet is gaining relevance as a platform where extremist organizations seek to recruit new members. For this preregistered study, we developed and tested a novel online game, Radicalise, which aims to combat the effectiveness of online recruitment strategies used by extremist organizations, based on the principles of active psychological inoculation. The game “inoculates” players by exposing them to severely weakened doses of the key techniques and methods used to recruit and radicalize individuals via social media platforms: identifying vulnerable individuals, gaining their trust, isolating them from their community and pressuring them into committing a criminal act in the name of the extremist organization. To test the game's effectiveness, we conducted a preregistered 2 × 2 mixed (pre–post) randomized controlled experiment (n = 291) with two outcome measures. The first measured participants’ ability and confidence in assessing the manipulativeness of fictitious WhatsApp messages making use of an extremist manipulation technique before and after playing. The second measured participants’ ability to identify what factors make an individual vulnerable to extremist recruitment using 10 profile vignettes, also before and after playing. We find that playing Radicalise significantly improves participants’ ability and confidence in spotting manipulative messages and the characteristics associated with vulnerability.

Interest in the psychology of misinformation has exploded in recent years. Despite ample research, to date there is no psychometrically validated instrument to measure people’s ability to detect misinformation. To overcome this, we introduce the Verification done framework, an overarching interpretation schema, that simultaneously considers overall veracity discernment, and the distinct, measurable abilities (real news detection, fake news detection), and biases (distrust—negative judgement bias; naïvité—positive judgement bias) that it is composed of—thus offering a holistic and nuanced assessment. We then conduct three studies with six independent samples (Ntotal = 7,291) to develop, validate, and apply the Misinformation Susceptibility Test (MIST), the first psychometrically validated measurement instrument of veracity discernment ability. In Study 1 (N = 409), we use a neural network language model to generate items for our test, and use factor analysis and item-response theory to create the MIST-20 (20 items; <2 minutes) and MIST-8 (8 items; <1 minute). In Study 2 (N = 6,461), we confirm model fit in four representative samples (US, UK), from three different sampling platforms—Respondi, CloudResearch, and Prolific. We also explore the MIST’s nomological net, which demonstrates good convergent and discriminant validity, and generate age-, region-, and country-specific norm tables. In Study 3 (N = 421), we demonstrate how the MIST can be used in practice to test the effectiveness of interventions using the Verification done framework. We provide instructions for researchers and practitioners on how to implement the MIST as a screening tool, covariate, or framework for evaluating effects.

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