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A comparison of prebunking and debunking interventions for implied versus explicit misinformation
Author(s) -
Tay Li Qian,
Hurlstone Mark J.,
Kurz Tim,
Ecker Ullrich K. H.
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/bjop.12551
Subject(s) - misinformation , psychology , psychological intervention , social psychology , promotion (chess) , cognitive psychology , applied psychology , computer science , psychiatry , computer security , political science , politics , law
Psychological research has offered valuable insights into how to combat misinformation. The studies conducted to date, however, have three limitations. First, pre‐emptive (“prebunking”) and retroactive (“debunking”) interventions have mostly been examined in parallel, and thus it is unclear which of these two predominant approaches is more effective. Second, there has been a focus on misinformation that is explicitly false, but implied misinformation that uses literally true information to mislead is common in the real world. Finally, studies have relied mainly on questionnaire measures of reasoning, neglecting behavioural impacts of misinformation and interventions. To offer incremental progress towards addressing these three issues, we conducted an experiment ( N = 735) involving misinformation on fair trade. We contrasted the effectiveness of prebunking versus debunking and the impacts of implied versus explicit misinformation, and incorporated novel measures assessing consumer behaviours (i.e., willingness‐to‐pay; information seeking; online misinformation promotion) in addition to standard questionnaire measures. In general, both prebunking and debunking reduced misinformation reliance. We also found that individuals tended to rely more on explicit than implied misinformation both with and without interventions.