Psychological Inoculation against Misinformation: Current Evidence and Future Directions

Abstract

Much like a viral contagion, misinformation can spread rapidly from one individual to another. Inoculation theory offers a logical basis for developing a psychological “vaccine” against misinformation. We discuss the origins of inoculation theory, starting with its roots in the 1960s as a “vaccine for brainwash,” and detail the major theoretical and practical innovations that inoculation research has witnessed over the years. Specifically, we review a series of randomized lab and field studies that show that it is possible to preemptively “immunize” people against misinformation by preexposing them to severely weakened doses of the techniques that underlie its production along with ways on how to spot and refute them. We review evidence from interventions that we developed with governments and social media companies to help citizens around the world recognize and resist unwanted attempts to influence and mislead. We conclude with a discussion of important open questions about the effectiveness of inoculation interventions.

Technique-based inoculation against real-world misinformation

“…This process has been shown to confer psychological resistance against future manipulation attempts, much like a medical vaccine induces resistance against a particular pathogen [ 13 , 14 ]. Inoculation messages typically consist of motivational threat and refutational pre-emption: the threat component forewarns individuals that they may be exposed to a persuasive attack, and refutational pre-emption either entails directly providing individuals with the counterarguments that refute incoming (mis)information, known as passive inoculation, or it actively involves the participant in the generation of those counterarguments, known as active inoculation [ 15 , 16 ]. Active inoculation may confer a comparatively stronger inoculation effect because people are encouraged to generate their own antibodies and counterarguments [ 17 , 18 ].…”

“…A seminal meta-analysis by Banas & Rains [ 24 ] highlights the ability of inoculation interventions to confer resistance against persuasive attacks with an average intervention effect size of d = 0.43. Several recent reviews have also highlighted the efficacy of inoculation in the context of misinformation specifically [ 15 , 16 , 25 ].…”

“…A final and important distinction has been made between refutational-same versus refutational-different messages [ 18 ], where refutational- same messages inoculate against specific material individuals will later be exposed to, whereas refutational- different messages tackle arguments that individuals may not directly be directly exposed to later, but that may help bolster resistance towards various different persuasive attacks [ 16 ]. In recent years, researchers have started to focus on inoculating people against misinformation techniques, rather than individual examples of misinformation, representing a form of refutational-different inoculation [ 16 ].…”

Nudging Social Media toward Accuracy

“…Periodically asking users to rate the accuracy of content while they scroll through their newsfeed will not only prompt them to consider accuracy when making subsequent sharing decisions but can also help to generate crowd ratings that platforms can use to help inform ranking algorithms or misinformation labeling. Accuracy prompts are also likely to work in a synergistic fashion with media literacy and other educational or fact-checking interventions aimed at improving users’ truth discernment ( Guess et al 2020 ; van der Linden et al 2021 ; Nieminen and Rapeli 2018 ; Traberg, Roozenbeek, and van der Linden, this volume ). An increased focus on accuracy can only improve sharing insofar as users can successfully assess which headlines are inaccurate, and so improving users’ truth discernment will magnify the impact of accuracy prompts.…”

“…2 Here we review a burgeoning literature on a relatively new approach to the online misinformation problem that has been gaining traction: accuracy “nudges” (or prompts, or primes) that increase the quality of content that users share on social media. We focus on accuracy nudges because other common types of interventions against misinformation, such as debunking/fact checking or educational approaches that teach people to identify misinformation, are reviewed extensively elsewhere ( Chan et al 2017 ; Kozyreva, Lewandowsky, and Hertwig 2020 ; van der Linden et al 2021 ; Traberg, Roozenbeek, and van der Linden, this volume ). Accuracy nudges also have the advantages of being extremely fast to administer and not requiring foreknowledge of which news stories are accurate versus misleading.…”