Time and skeptical opinion content erode the effects of science coverage on climate beliefs and attitudes.

Although experiments show that exposure to factual information can increase factual accuracy, the public remains stubbornly misinformed about many issues. Why do misperceptions persist even when factual interventions generally succeed at increasing the accuracy of people's beliefs? We seek to answer this question by testing the role of information exposure and decay effects in a four-wave panel experiment (n = 2,898 at wave 4) in which we randomize the media content that people in the United States see about climate change. Our results indicate that science coverage of climate change increases belief accuracy and support for government action immediately after exposure, including among Republicans and people who reject anthropogenic climate change. However, both effects decay over time and can be attenuated by exposure to skeptical opinion content (but not issue coverage featuring partisan conflict). These findings demonstrate that the increases in belief accuracy generated by science coverage are short lived and can be neutralized by skeptical opinion content.

The global effectiveness of fact-checking: Evidence from simultaneous experiments in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

The spread of misinformation is a global phenomenon, with implications for elections, state-sanctioned violence, and health outcomes. Yet, even though scholars have investigated the capacity of fact-checking to reduce belief in misinformation, little evidence exists on the global effectiveness of this approach. We describe fact-checking experiments conducted simultaneously in Argentina, Nigeria, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, in which we studied whether fact-checking can durably reduce belief in misinformation. In total, we evaluated 22 fact-checks, including two that were tested in all four countries. Fact-checking reduced belief in misinformation, with most effects still apparent more than 2 wk later. A meta-analytic procedure indicates that fact-checks reduced belief in misinformation by at least 0.59 points on a 5-point scale. Exposure to misinformation, however, only increased false beliefs by less than 0.07 points on the same scale. Across continents, fact-checks reduce belief in misinformation, often durably so.

Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms.

Democratic stability depends on citizens on the losing side accepting election outcomes. Can rhetoric by political leaders undermine this norm? Using a panel survey experiment, we evaluate the effects of exposure to multiple statements from former president Donald Trump attacking the legitimacy of the 2020 US presidential election. Although exposure to these statements does not measurably affect general support for political violence or belief in democracy, it erodes trust and confidence in elections and increases belief that the election is rigged among people who approve of Trump's job performance. These results suggest that rhetoric from political elites can undermine respect for critical democratic norms among their supporters.

The wisdom of partisan crowds.

Theories in favor of deliberative democracy are based on the premise that social information processing can improve group beliefs. While research on the "wisdom of crowds" has found that information exchange can increase belief accuracy on noncontroversial factual matters, theories of political polarization imply that groups will become more extreme-and less accurate-when beliefs are motivated by partisan political bias. A primary concern is that partisan biases are associated not only with more extreme beliefs, but also with a diminished response to social information. While bipartisan networks containing both Democrats and Republicans are expected to promote accurate belief formation, politically homogeneous networks are expected to amplify partisan bias and reduce belief accuracy. To test whether the wisdom of crowds is robust to partisan bias, we conducted two web-based experiments in which individuals answered factual questions known to elicit partisan bias before and after observing the estimates of peers in a politically homogeneous social network. In contrast to polarization theories, we found that social information exchange in homogeneous networks not only increased accuracy but also reduced polarization. Our results help generalize collective intelligence research to political domains.

Factual corrections: Concerns and current evidence.

Factual corrections that target misinformation improve belief accuracy. They do so across a wide variety of countries, political beliefs and demographic characteristics. Instances of backfire, wherein exposure to corrections reduce accuracy, are exceedingly rare and may be an artifact of research design. The evidence regarding other common concerns is mixed. While the effects on corrections on belief are not permanent, they are not entirely ephemeral, either. With some exceptions, corrections mostly only affect belief accuracy, with minor to nonexistent influence on downstream attitudes and behaviors. While corrections are not unpopular among the public, limited available evidence suggests that those who see misinformation are exceedingly unlikely to see relevant corrections.

Correcting misinformation about the Russia-Ukraine War reduces false beliefs but does not change views about the War.

We report results from simultaneous experiments conducted in late 2022 in Belarus, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine. The experiments focus on fact-checking misinformation supportive of Russia in the Russia-Ukraine War. Meta-analysis makes clear that fact-checking misinformation reduces belief in pro-Kremlin false claims. Effects of fact-checks are not uniform across countries; our meta-analytic estimate is reliant on belief accuracy increases observed in Russia and Ukraine. While fact-checks improve belief accuracy, they do not change respondents' attitudes about which side to support in the War. War does not render individuals hopelessly vulnerable to misinformation-but fact-checking misinformation is unlikely to change their views toward the conflict.

The role of mental representation in sharing misinformation online.

Fuzzy-trace theory (FTT) posits that people share misinformation online if it promotes gist mental representations, cuing motivationally relevant values. Most people value the truth. Thus, per FTT, people decide to share messages that they perceive as true. FTT also predicts that messages will be more effective if they communicate a simple gist. We test these predictions by examining the roles of mental representation and epistemic quality in decisions to share misinformative articles on Facebook across two experiments and two correlational studies. In Studies 1 and 2, we use Facebook data to test the hypothesis that gist proxies in text are associated with online sharing. In Study 3, we experimentally manipulate subjects' exposure to a gist-based intervention that explains why a misinformative article is false, a simple debunk stating only that the article is false (but not explaining why) and a verbatim condition providing relevant detailed information but allowing subjects to draw their own conclusions. We found that the gist condition decreased intentions to share misinformation. Finally, in Study 4, we replicated this finding and showed that the gist condition also reduces misinformation endorsement. Results provide support for FTT's predictions regarding reducing sharing and endorsement of misinformation on social media. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Correcting COVID-19 vaccine misinformation in 10 countries.

What can be done to reduce misperceptions about COVID-19 vaccines? We present results from experiments conducted simultaneously on YouGov samples in 10 countries (N = 10 600), which reveal that factual corrections consistently reduce false beliefs about vaccines. With results from these 10 countries, we find that exposure to corrections increases belief accuracy by 0.16 on a 4-point scale, while exposure to misinformation decreases belief accuracy by 0.09 on the same scale. We are unable to find evidence that either misinformation or factual corrections affect intent to vaccinate or vaccine attitudes. Our findings on effect duration are less conclusive; when we recontacted participants two weeks later, we observed 39% of the initial accuracy increase, yet this result narrowly misses conventional thresholds of statistical significance (p = 0.06). Taken together, our results illustrate both the possibilities and limitations of factual corrections. Evidence from 10 highly diverse populations shows that exposure to factual information reduces belief in falsehoods about vaccines, but has minimal influence on subsequent behaviours and attitudes.