How To Fight Fake News With Behavioral Science
There has not been a time in recent history when the truth has mattered more than today. As governments, the medical system, and global citizens grapple with misinformation surrounding the economic and health costs of COVID-19, knowing what information to trust is now a matter of life and death, and helping people separate fact from fiction is critical.
False beliefs can be stubborn, and popular fact correction strategies such as the myth-versus- fact format may actually backfire.1 Take for example the flesh-eating bananas hoax of the year 2000. Stories of bananas causing a flesh-eating disease spread like wildfire via emails, text messages, and word of mouth. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) set up a hotline to counter misinformation and to assure worried Americans that bananas were perfectly safe. While clearly a hoax, the CDC’s efforts, in fact, lent credibility to this crazy story and even increased some people’s acceptance of it, so much so that similar stories were doing rounds even a decade later.2,3
The cognitive sciences suggest that we have information processing blind spots that make us susceptible to believing false information. When we encounter a claim, we evaluate its truth by focusing on a limited number of criteria. We ask ourselves at least one of the following five questions: 3,4
References
1 Schwarz, N., Newman, E., & Leach, W. (2016). Making the truth stick & the myths fade: Lessons from cognitive psychology. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), pp. 85–95.
2 Fragale, A. R., & Heath, C. (2004). Evolving informational credentials: The (mis)attribution of believable facts to credible sources. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 225–236
3 Erin Conway-Smith (2011). Mozambique: “Flesh-eating bananas” hoax goes viral. Public Radio International, retrieved from https://www.pri.org/
4 Schwarz, N. (2015). Metacognition. In M. Mikulincer, P. R. Shaver, E. Borgida, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), APA handbook of personality and social psychology: Attitudes and social cognition (Vol. 1, pp. 203–229). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association
5 Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140.
6 Visser, P. S., & Mirabile, R. R. (2004). Attitudes in the social context: The impact of social network composition on individual-level attitude strength. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 779–795.
7 Foster, J. L., Huthwaite, T., Yesberg, J. A., Garry, M., & Loftus, E. F. (2012). Repetition, not number of sources, increases both susceptibility to misinformation and confidence in the accuracy of eyewitnesses. Acta Psychologica, 139, 320–326.
8 Schwarz, N., Newman, E., & Leach, W. (2016). Making the truth stick & the myths fade: Lessons from cognitive psychology. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), pp. 85–95.
9 Wyer, R. S. (1974). Cognitive organization and change: An information processing approach. Potomac, MD: Erlbaum.
10 Edwards, K., & Smith, E. E. (1996). A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 5–24.
11 Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2012). Inference with mental models. In K. Holyoak & R. G. Morrison (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of thinking and reasoning (pp. 134–145). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
12 Eagly, A. H., & Chaiken, S. (1993). The psychology of attitudes. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College.
13 Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don’t we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1093–1096.
14 Skurnik, I., Yoon, C., Park, D. C., & Schwarz, N. (2005). How warnings about false claims become recommendations. Journal of Consumer Research, 31, 713–724.
15 Ayoob, K. T., Duyff, R. L., & Quagliani, D. (2002). Position of the American Dietetic Association: Food and nutrition misinformation. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 102, 260–266.
16 Chou, Vivian. To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? Searching for a verdict in the vaccination debate. Science in the News, Harvard University, retrieved from https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu
17 Schwarz, N., Newman, E., & Leach, W. (2016). Making the truth stick & the myths fade: Lessons from cognitive psychology. Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(1), pp. 85–95.
About the Author
Siddharth Ramalingam
Siddharth’s diverse education and experience feed his interest in the applicability of behavioral science in understanding our world and solving big problems. His work encompasses international development, consulting, finance, and social innovation. Apart from an MPA from Harvard University, he also has graduate degrees in Political Theory, Human Rights Law, Management, and Economics.
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