Good News about Bad News: Gamified Inoculation Boosts Confidence and Cognitive Immunity Against Fake News

Melisa Basol; Jon Roozenbeek; Sander van der Linden

doi:10.5334/joc.91

Good News about Bad News: Gamified Inoculation Boosts Confidence and Cognitive Immunity Against Fake News

Journal of Cognition

Volume 3 (2020): Issue 1

By: Melisa Basol, Jon Roozenbeek and Sander van der Linden

Open Access

|Jan 2020

Abstract

Recent research has explored the possibility of building attitudinal resistance against online misinformation through psychological inoculation. The inoculation metaphor relies on a medical analogy: by pre-emptively exposing people to weakened doses of misinformation cognitive immunity can be conferred. A recent example is the Bad News game, an online fake news game in which players learn about six common misinformation techniques. We present a replication and extension into the effectiveness of Bad News as an anti-misinformation intervention. We address three shortcomings identified in the original study: the lack of a control group, the relatively low number of test items, and the absence of attitudinal certainty measurements. Using a 2 (treatment vs. control) × 2 (pre vs. post) mixed design (N = 196) we measure participants’ ability to spot misinformation techniques in 18 fake headlines before and after playing Bad News. We find that playing Bad News significantly improves people’s ability to spot misinformation techniques compared to a gamified control group, and crucially, also increases people’s level of confidence in their own judgments. Importantly, this confidence boost only occurred for those who updated their reliability assessments in the correct direction. This study offers further evidence for the effectiveness of psychological inoculation against not only specific instances of fake news, but the very strategies used in its production. Implications are discussed for inoculation theory and cognitive science research on fake news.

References

Arun, C. (2019). On WhatsApp, Rumours, and Lynchings. Economic & Political Review Weekly, 6, 30–35.
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Banas, J. A., & Rains, S. A. (2010). A Meta-Analysis of Research on Inoculation Theory. Communication Monographs, 77(3), 281–311. DOI: 10.1080/03637751003758193
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Bonetto, E., Troïan, J., Varet, F., Monaco, G. L., & Girandola, F. (2018). Priming Resistance to Persuasion decreases adherence to Conspiracy Theories. Social Influence, 13(3), 125–136. DOI: 10.1080/15534510.2018.1471415
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Chan, M., Pui, S., Jones, C. R., Hall Jamieson, K., & Albarracín, D. (2017). Debunking: A Meta-Analysis of the Psychological Efficacy of Messages Countering Misinformation. Psychological Science, 28(11), 1531–1546. DOI: 10.1177/0956797617714579
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Compton, J. (2013). Inoculation theory. In J. P. Dillard, & L. Shen (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice (pp. 220–237). DOI: 10.4135/9781452218410.n14
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Compton, J. (2019). Prophylactic versus therapeutic inoculation treatments for resistance to influence. Communication Theory, qtz004. DOI: 10.1093/ct/qtz004
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Compton, J. A., & Pfau, M. (2005). Inoculation theory of resistance to influence at maturity: Recent progress in theory development and application and suggestions for future research. Annals of the International Communication Association, 29(1), 97–146. DOI: 10.1080/23808985.2005.11679045
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Cook, J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. (2017). Neutralizing misinformation through inoculation: Exposing misleading argumentation techniques reduces their influence. PloS one, 12(5), e0175799. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175799
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
DROG. (2018). A good way to fight bad news. www.aboutbadnews.com. Retrieved from www.aboutbadnews.com
Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Funder, D. C., & Ozer, D. J. (2019). Evaluating Effect Size in Psychological Research: Sense and Nonsense. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2(2), 156–168. DOI: 10.1177/2515245919847202
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Kucharski, A. (2016). Post-truth: Study epidemiology of fake news. Nature, 540(7634), 525. DOI: 10.1038/540525a
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lazer, D. M., Baum, M. A., Benkler, Y., Berinsky, A. J., Greenhill, K. M., Menczer, F., & Schudson, M. (2018). The science of fake news. Science, 359(6380), 1094–1096. DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2998
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., & Cook, J. (2017). Beyond Misinformation: Understanding and Coping with the “Post-Truth” Era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6(4), 353–369. DOI: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.07.008
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Lewandowsky, S., Ecker, U. K. H., Seifert, C. M., Schwarz, N., & Cook, J. (2012). Misinformation and Its Correction: Continued Influence and Successful Debiasing. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 13(3), 106–131. DOI: 10.1177/1529100612451018
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
McGuire, W. J. (1964). Inducing resistance against persuasion: Some contemporary approaches. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1, 191–229. DOI: 10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60052-0
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
McGuire, W. J., & Papageorgis, D. (1961). Resistance to persuasion conferred by active and passive prior refutation of the same and alternative counterarguments. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 326–332. DOI: 10.1037/h0048344
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Nyhan, B., Porter, E., Reifler, J., & Wood, T. J. (2019). Taking fact-checks literally but not seriously? The effects of journalistic fact-checking on factual beliefs and candidate favorability. Political Behavior (pp. 1–22). DOI: 10.1007/s11109-019-09528-x
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Peer, E., Brandimarte, L., Samat, S., & Acquisti, A. (2017). Beyond the Turk: Alternative platforms for crowdsourcing behavioral research. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70, 153–163. DOI: 10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.006
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pennycook, G., Cannon, T. D., & Rand, D. G. (2018). Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(12), 1865–1880. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000465
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019). Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning. Cognition, 188, 39–50. DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pfau, M., Ivanov, B., Houston, B., Haigh, M., Sims, J., Gilchrist, E., & Richert, N. (2005). Inoculation and mental processing: The instrumental role of associative networks in the process of resistance to counterattitudinal influence. Communication Monographs, 72(4), 414–441. DOI: 10.1080/03637750500322578
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Pryor, B., & Steinfatt, T. M. (1978). The effects of initial belief level on inoculation theory and its proposed mechanisms. Human Communication Research, 4(3), 217–230. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.1978.tb00611.x
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2018). The fake news game: actively inoculating against the risk of misinformation. Journal of Risk Research, 22(5), 570–580. DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2018.1443491
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Roozenbeek, J., & van der Linden, S. (2019). Fake news game confers psychological resistance against online misinformation. Nature Palgrave Communications, 5(65). DOI: 10.1057/s41599-019-0279-9
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Schmid, P., & Betsch, C. (2019). Effective strategies for rebutting science denialism in public discussions. Nature Human Behaviour. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0632-4
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Tormala, Z. L., & Petty, R. E. (2004). Source Credibility and Attitude Certainty: A Metacognitive Analysis of Resistance to Persuasion. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 14(4), 427–442. DOI: 10.1207/s15327663jcp1404_11
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
van der Linden, S., Leiserowitz, A., Rosenthal, S., & Maibach, E. (2017). Inoculating the Public against Misinformation about Climate Change. Global Challenges, 1(2), 1600008. DOI: 10.1002/gch2.201600008
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
van der Linden, S., Maibach, E., Cook, J., Leiserowitz, A., & Lewandowsky, S. (2017). Inoculating against misinformation. Science, 358(6367), 1141–1142. DOI: 10.1126/science.aar4533
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Walter, N., & Murphy, S. T. (2018). How to unring the bell: A meta-analytic approach to correction of misinformation. Communication Monographs, 85(3), 423–441. DOI: 10.1080/03637751.2018.1467564
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article
Wood, M. L. (2007). Rethinking the inoculation analogy: Effects on subjects with differing preexisting attitudes. Human Communication Research, 33(3), 357–378. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2007.00303.x
Open DOI Search in Google Scholar Back to article

Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.91 | Journal eISSN: 2514-4820

Journal RSS Feed

Language: English

Submitted on: Aug 5, 2019

Accepted on: Dec 2, 2019

Published on: Jan 10, 2020

Published by: Ubiquity Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

Keywords:

Judgment,

Decision making,

Reasoning

© 2020 Melisa Basol, Jon Roozenbeek, Sander van der Linden, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 3 (2020): Issue 1