Contrast analyses.

Individuals often continue to rely on misinformation in their reasoning and decision making even after it has been corrected. This is known as the continued influence effect, and one of its presumed drivers is misinformation familiarity. As continued influence can promote misguided or unsafe behaviours, it is important to find ways to minimize the effect by designing more effective corrections. It has been argued that correction effectiveness is reduced if the correction repeats the to-be-debunked misinformation, thereby boosting its familiarity. Some have even suggested that this familiarity boost may cause a correction to inadvertently increase subsequent misinformation reliance; a phenomenon termed the familiarity backfire effect. A study by Pluviano et al. (2017) found evidence for this phenomenon using vaccine-related stimuli. The authors found that repeating vaccine “myths” and contrasting them with corresponding facts backfired relative to a control condition, ironically increasing false vaccine beliefs. The present study sought to replicate and extend this study. We included four conditions from the original Pluviano et al. study: the myths vs. facts, a visual infographic, a fear appeal, and a control condition. The present study also added a “myths-only” condition, which simply repeated false claims and labelled them as false; theoretically, this condition should be most likely to produce familiarity backfire. Participants received vaccine-myth corrections and were tested immediately post-correction, and again after a seven-day delay. We found that the myths vs. facts condition reduced vaccine misconceptions. None of the conditions increased vaccine misconceptions relative to control at either timepoint, or relative to a pre-intervention baseline; thus, no backfire effects were observed. This failure to replicate adds to the mounting evidence against familiarity backfire effects and has implications for vaccination communications and the design of debunking interventions.

个体在推理与决策过程中，即便接收到针对错误信息的纠正，仍会持续依赖该错误信息，这一现象被称为持续影响效应（continued influence effect），而其潜在驱动因素之一为错误信息的熟悉度。鉴于持续影响效应可能催生误导性或不安全的行为，因此通过设计更有效的纠正方式来削弱该效应，具有重要研究与实践价值。有研究指出，若纠正内容重复了待驳斥的错误信息，反而会提升该信息的熟悉度，进而降低纠正效果。甚至有学者提出，这种熟悉度提升可能会让纠正行为无意间增加后续人们对错误信息的依赖，这一现象被称为熟悉度逆火效应（familiarity backfire effect）。Pluviano等人（2017）的一项研究采用疫苗相关刺激材料，为该现象提供了实证依据。研究团队发现，相较于对照组，重复提及疫苗“谬论”并将其与对应事实进行对比的操作反而产生了逆火效果，反常地增强了人们对疫苗相关错误认知的接受度。本研究旨在对该研究进行重复验证并加以拓展。我们沿用了原始Pluviano等人研究中的四种实验条件：谬论vs事实组、可视化信息图组、恐惧诉求组以及对照组。此外，本研究新增了“仅谬论”组，即仅重复虚假主张并将其标注为虚假内容；从理论层面而言，该组最有可能出现熟悉度逆火效应。被试接收了针对疫苗谬论的纠正内容，并在纠正后即刻接受测试，同时在7天延迟后再次接受测试。结果显示，谬论vs事实组能够降低人们的疫苗错误认知。在两个测试时间点上，相较于对照组，以及相较于干预前的基线水平，所有实验条件均未提升人们的疫苗错误认知，因此未观察到逆火效应。本次未能重复出原研究结果的发现，进一步补充了反对熟悉度逆火效应的累积性证据，同时对疫苗传播沟通与驳斥干预的设计具有借鉴意义。