Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention

Across two studies with over 1,600 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 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 are asked directly about accuracy. Furthermore, 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 – more than doubled the level of truth discernment in participants’ 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.

在两项针对超过1,600名在线招募的美国成年人的研究中，我们提供了证据表明，人们之所以会分享关于COVID-19的错误陈述，部分原因在于他们在决定分享内容时，未能充分思考内容是否准确。在研究1中，相对于直接询问内容的准确性，参与者们在决定在社交媒体上分享何种内容时，辨别真伪的能力明显较低。此外，认知反思和科学知识与更强的辨别能力相关联。在研究2中，我们发现，在研究开始时进行简单的准确性提醒——即判断与COVID-19无关的新闻标题的准确性——将参与者在分享意图中的真伪辨别水平提高了超过一倍。我们的研究结果与先前发现的关于政治虚假新闻的结果相呼应，表明引导人们思考准确性是一种简单的方法，可以改善社交媒体上分享内容的选择。