The Misleading count:  An identity-based intervention to counter partisan misinformation sharing

Bavel, Jay J. Van; Javeed, Ali; Hughes, Diána R; Hackenburg, Kobi; Tsakiris, Manos; Vilarroya, Óscar; Bavel, Jay Joseph Van

doi:10.31234/osf.io/7j26y

Cited by 18 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…In line with this, experimental studies have found that providing social rewards for sharing high-quality content and punishments for sharing low-quality content 77 improves the quality of news people report intending to share. Additionally, making people publicly endorse that the news that they share is accurate 78 , or showing people that fellow in-group members believe content is misleading 79 , also improves people's sharing intentions. Future work should continue to explore how to incentivize people to engage with more accurate content online by, for example, emphasizing social norms around accuracy or emphasizing the reputational benefits of sharing accurate content (as in experiment 4).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information

et al. 2023

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The extent to which belief in (mis)information reflects lack of knowledge versus a lack of motivation to be accurate is unclear. Here, across four experiments (n = 3,364), we motivated US participants to be accurate by providing financial incentives for correct responses about the veracity of true and false political news headlines. Financial incentives improved accuracy and reduced partisan bias in judgements of headlines by about 30%, primarily by increasing the perceived accuracy of true news from the opposing party (d = 0.47). Incentivizing people to identify news that would be liked by their political allies, however, decreased accuracy. Replicating prior work, conservatives were less accurate at discerning true from false headlines than liberals, yet incentives closed the gap in accuracy between conservatives and liberals by 52%. A non-financial accuracy motivation intervention was also effective, suggesting that motivation-based interventions are scalable. Altogether, these results suggest that a substantial portion of people’s judgements of the accuracy of news reflects motivational factors.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information

et al. 2023

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“…For instance, interventions based on in-group norms have been found to decrease willingness to fight and die in defense of sacred values in devoted actors (Hamid et al, 2019). When it comes to misinformation, interventions and platform features that appeal to identity and group-based norms might be more effective than identity-neutral alternatives for extreme partisans (Pretus et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of political devotion in sharing partisan misinformation and resistance to fact-checking.

Bavel¹,

Servin-Barthet²,

Harris³

et al. 2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Online misinformation is disproportionality created and spread by people with extreme political attitudes, especially among the far-right. There is a debate in the literature about why people spread misinformation and what should be done about it. According to the purely cognitive account, people largely spread misinformation because they are lazy, not biased. According to a motivational account, people are also motivated to believe and spread misinformation for ideological and partisan reasons. To better understand the psychological and neurocognitive processes that underlie misinformation sharing among the far-right, we conducted a cross-cultural experiment with conservatives and far-right partisans in the Unites States and Spain (N = 1,609) and a neuroimaging study with far-right partisans in Spain (N = 36). Far-right partisans in Spain and U.S. Republicans who highly identify with Trump were more likely to share misinformation than center-right voters and other Republicans, especially when the misinformation was related to sacred values (e.g., immigration). Sacred values predicted misinformation sharing above and beyond familiarity, attitude strength, and salience of the issue. Moreover, far-right partisans were unresponsive to fact-checking and accuracy nudges. At a neural level, this group showed increased activity in brain regions implicated in mentalizing and norm compliance in response to posts with sacred values. These results suggest that the two components of political devotion-identity fusion and sacred values-play a key role in misinformation sharing, highlighting the identity-affirming dimension of misinformation sharing. We discuss the need for motivational and identity-based interventions to help curb misinformation for high-risk partisan groups.

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“…This section starts with a review article on punishment as a bottom-up means of norm enforcement across cultures and societies [31]. It proceeds with four research articles that design and test norm interventions to change behavioural intentions in both online [32] and offline settings and in different cultural contexts [33], for norms and meta norms [29], to assess both individual and welfare consequences [30].…”

Section: (C) Engineering Norm Change For Behavioural Changementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent studies show that the success of accuracy-nudging interventions, which are among the most popular approaches to combating misinformation, is relatively weak, especially when the issue is politically polarized. Pretus et al [32] conduct three experiments in the USA and in the UK and find that exposing individuals to normative accuracy judgements by their in-group (versus general others) reduces the likelihood that they will share inaccurate information about partisan issues by 25% (compared to a control condition).…”

Section: (C) Engineering Norm Change For Behavioural Changementioning

confidence: 99%

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Social norm change: drivers and consequences

Andrighetto,

Gavrilets,

Gelfand

et al. 2024

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Social norms research is booming. In recent years, several experts have recommended using social norms (unwritten rules that prescribe what people ought or ought not to do) to confront the societal, environmental and health challenges our societies face. If we are to do so, a better understanding is required of how social norms themselves emerge, evolve and respond to these challenges. Social norms have long been used as post hoc explanations of behaviour or are seen as stable social constructs. Yet norms evolve dynamically with the changing group processes (e.g. political polarization, kinship structures) and societal challenges (e.g. pandemics, climate change) for which they are presented as solutions. The Theme Issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences' contains 14 contributions that present state-of-the-art approaches to understand what generates social norm change and how this impacts our societies. Contributions give insight into (i) the identification of norms, norm change and their effect on behaviour; (ii) drivers and consequences of spontaneous norm change; and (iii) how norm change can be engineered to promote desired behavioural change. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Social norm change: drivers and consequences’.

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The Misleading count: An identity-based intervention to counter partisan misinformation sharing

Cited by 18 publications

References 24 publications

Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information

Accuracy and social motivations shape judgements of (mis)information

The role of political devotion in sharing partisan misinformation and resistance to fact-checking.

Social norm change: drivers and consequences

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