Thinking more or thinking differently? Using drift-diffusion modeling to illuminate why accuracy prompts decrease misinformation sharing

Lin, Hause; Pennycook, Gordon; Rand, David G.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105312

Cited by 27 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…They have been found to reduce the intent to share false headlines and increase the quality of information shared (Pennycook & Rand, 2022). Similar to the findings regarding the effect of warnings of false information on later truth judgments (Jalbert et al, 2020), accuracy nudges seem to be effective not necessarily because they increase how much people think about information, but rather because they change what people are thinking about, with increased consideration of the information's veracity (Lin et al, 2023).…”

Section: Attention To Truth and Accuracy Nudgessupporting

confidence: 60%

Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation.

Jalbert,

Wack,

Arya

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

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The spread of false information on social media is a growing problem, necessitating the development of interventions to reduce its impact. We tested the potential effectiveness of social "truth queries"-user replies that draw attention to truth-as a novel intervention for reducing the impact of false information shared on social media. Participants were shown Tweets containing false information that appeared with user replies containing truth queries (Experiments 1-3), no replies (Experiments 1-3), or user replies unrelated to truth (Experiments 2 and 3) and asked to judge either the truth of the information contained in the Tweet or their likelihood of sharing it. We consistently found that social truth queries reduce belief in and reported intent to share Tweets containing

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Section: Attention To Truth and Accuracy Nudgessupporting

confidence: 60%

Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation.

Jalbert,

Wack,

Arya

et al. 2023

Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These nudges have been found to reduce the intent to share false headlines and increase the quality of information shared (24). Similar to the findings about the effect of warnings of false information on later truth judgments (25), accuracy nudges seem to be effective not necessarily because they increase how much people think about information, but rather because they change what people are thinking about, with increased consideration of the information's veracity (26).…”

Section: Attention To Truth and Accuracy Nudgessupporting

confidence: 57%

Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation

Jalbert¹,

Wack²,

Arya³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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The spread of false information on social media is a growing problem that has necessitated the development of interventions to reduce its impact. We tested the potential effectiveness of social “truth queries” — user replies that draw attention to truth — as a novel intervention for reducing the impact of false information shared on social media. Participants were shown Tweets containing false information that appeared with user replies containing truth queries (Experiments 1-3), no replies (Experiments 1-3), or user replies unrelated to truth (Experiments 2-3) and asked to judge either the truth of the information contained in the Tweet or their likelihood of sharing it. We consistently found that social truth queries reduce belief in and reported intent to share Tweets containing false information compared to no replies or replies unrelated to truth. The findings suggest the usefulness of truth queries as a simple, flexible, user-driven approach to addressing online misinformation.

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“…To test the above possible mechanisms, we modeled our data using the DDM ( Ratcliff, 1978 ; Ratcliff and McKoon, 2008 , see also Lin et al, 2023 ). We modeled participants’ responses (‘veracity-promoting’ vs ‘veracity-obstructing’ choice) separately for each type of feedback (‘(Dis)Trust’, ‘(Dis)Like’, Baseline) and each experiment (Experiments 2 and 3).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation

Globig

Holtz

Sharot

2023

eLife

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The powerful allure of social media platforms has been attributed to the human need for social rewards. Here, we demonstrate that the spread of misinformation on such platforms is facilitated by existing social ‘carrots’ (e.g., ‘likes’) and ‘sticks’ (e.g., ‘dislikes’) that are dissociated from the veracity of the information shared. Testing 951 participants over six experiments, we show that a slight change to the incentive structure of social media platforms, such that social rewards and punishments are contingent on information veracity, produces a considerable increase in the discernment of shared information. Namely, an increase in the proportion of true information shared relative to the proportion of false information shared. Computational modeling (i.e., drift-diffusion models) revealed the underlying mechanism of this effect is associated with an increase in the weight participants assign to evidence consistent with discerning behavior. The results offer evidence for an intervention that could be adopted to reduce misinformation spread, which in turn could reduce violence, vaccine hesitancy and political polarization, without reducing engagement.

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Thinking more or thinking differently? Using drift-diffusion modeling to illuminate why accuracy prompts decrease misinformation sharing

Cited by 27 publications

References 57 publications

Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation.

Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation.

Social truth queries: Development of a new user-driven intervention for countering online misinformation

Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation

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