Sangam: A Confluence of Knowledge Streams

Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention

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dc.contributor Sloan School of Management
dc.contributor Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
dc.creator Pennycook, Gordon
dc.creator McPhetres, Jonathan
dc.creator Lu, Guannan
dc.creator Rand, David G.
dc.creator Zhang, Yunhao,S.M.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
dc.date 2020-07-08T14:11:31Z
dc.date 2020-07-08T14:11:31Z
dc.date 2020-06
dc.date 2020-04
dc.date.accessioned 2023-03-01T18:11:22Z
dc.date.available 2023-03-01T18:11:22Z
dc.identifier 0956-7976
dc.identifier 1467-9280
dc.identifier https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/126080
dc.identifier Pennycook, Gordon, et al. "Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention." Psychological Science (June 2020): p. 1-11 doi 10.1177/0956797620939054 ©2020 The Author(s)
dc.identifier.uri http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/279087
dc.description Across two studies with more than 1,700 U.S. adults recruited online, we present evidence that people share false claims about COVID-19 partly because they simply fail to think sufficiently about whether or not the content is accurate when deciding what to share. In Study 1, participants were far worse at discerning between true and false content when deciding what they would share on social media relative to when they were asked directly about accuracy. Furthermore, greater cognitive reflection and science knowledge were associated with stronger discernment. In Study 2, we found that a simple accuracy reminder at the beginning of the study (i.e., judging the accuracy of a non-COVID-19-related headline) nearly tripled the level of truth discernment in participants’ subsequent sharing intentions. Our results, which mirror those found previously for political fake news, suggest that nudging people to think about accuracy is a simple way to improve choices about what to share on social media.
dc.format application/pdf
dc.publisher SAGE Publications
dc.relation http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797620939054
dc.relation Psychological Science
dc.rights Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
dc.rights http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
dc.source bioRxiv
dc.title Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on Social Media: Experimental Evidence for a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention
dc.type Article
dc.type http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle


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