A Psychological Vaccine Against Fake News
Sander van der Linden
18/2/2022 Professor of Social Psychology in Society Director, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge @Sander_vdLinden What is “fake news”?(van der Linden, Roozenbeek, Oosterwoud, Compton, & Lewandowsky, 2017)
• Misinformation • “False or incorrect information” (including human error).
• Disinformation (misinformation + intent) • “The purposeful spread of false or incorrect information with the explicit intent to cause harm or to confuse and deceive others”.
• Political Propaganda (disinformation + political agenda) • “Institutionalized or state-run public indoctrination campaigns”.
Misinformation Propaganda
“Fake News”
Disinformation What to do about it? PRE-BUNKING Exposure to DE-BUNKING e.g. inoculation MISINFO e.g. fact-check
Time
Resistance to Persuasion Inoculation Theory William J. McGuire (1969)
The process of psychological “inoculation”
Triggers production of mental “antibodies”
The vaccine Psychological Inoculation
Through internal rehearsal Increased A) Affective basis: resistance to future exposure and “Warning of impending threat” persuasion attempts
B) Cognitive basis: “Refutational preemption” A psychological vaccine against fake news Inoculating against misinformation A psychological vaccine against fake news Defence Against the Dark Arts?
"Your defences must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you seek to undo" —Professor Snape A psychological vaccine against fake news The Fake News Game: Bad News! (getbadnews.com) The Fake News Game (www.getbadnews.com) The Fake News Game: Six Badges (DEPICT SCALE) The Fake News Game: Six Badges (DEPICT SCALE)
END Game Polarization Module Results Inoculating against misinformation (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019)
Available on OSF Items Raw Datasets R Scripts
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0279-9 Results so far (N = 30,000, n = 15,000) Randomized replication
Melisa Basol Available on OSF Items Raw Datasets Randomized replication R Scripts Confidence judgments (n = 197)
Melisa Basol
d = 0.60 Confidence judgments (n = 197)
Melisa Basol
d = 0.50 Preregistered randomized replication
Rakoen Maertens
Preregistered randomized replication
Rakoen Maertens Available on OSF Experiment 1 (Maertens et al., 2020) Preregistration Items Reliability Rating of Fake News Raw Datasets R Scripts N = 118 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 1 week T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 1 (Maertens et al., 2020) Preregistration Items Reliability Rating of Fake News Raw Datasets R Scripts N = 118 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 1 week T4Cohen’s = POST d -=5 1.00 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 1 (Maertens et al., 2020) Preregistration Items Reliability Rating of Fake News Raw Datasets R Scripts N = 118 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 1 week T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 1 (Maertens et al., 2020) Preregistration Items Reliability Rating of Fake News Raw Datasets R Scripts N = 118 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 1 week T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 1 (Maertens et al., 2020) Preregistration Items Reliability Rating of Fake News Raw Datasets R Scripts N = 118 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 1 week T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 2 (Maertens et al., 2020) Items Raw Datasets Reliability Rating of Fake News R Scripts
N = 110 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 19 weekweeks T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 2 (Maertens et al., 2020) Items Raw Datasets Reliability Rating of Fake News R Scripts
N = 110 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks TT33 = POST - 19 weekweeks T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Available on OSF Experiment 2 (Maertens et al., 2020) Items Raw Datasets Reliability Rating of Fake News R Scripts
N = 110 | Error Bars = 95% CI
T1 = PRE T2 = POST - 0 weeks T3 = POST - 19 weekweeks T4 = POST - 5 weeks T5 = POST - 13 weeks Bad News Around the World: A Global Vaccination Program
Available on OSF Items Raw Datasets R Scripts Spreading the vaccine….
Bad News is available in 15 additional languages Bad News Around the World: A Global Vaccination Program
Roozenbeek, van der Linden, & Nygren (2020)
Welcome to Sweden! Bad News Around the World: A Global Vaccination Program
d = 0.37 COVID-19 inoculation game with UK Govt + WHO + UN
Prebunking with Cass at the UN….
Bad News goes WhatsApp Harmony Square Harmony Square Harmony Square Harmony Square Harmony Square Harmony Square (real fake news) Harmony Square (real fake news)
d = 0.30 dd== 0.540.28 Herd Immunity Against Misinformation Thank you