Understanding and combatting misinformation across 16 countries on six continents
Open accessAbstract
The spread of misinformation online is a global problem that requires global solutions. To that end, we conducted an experiment in 16 countries across 6 continents (N = 33,480) to investigate predictors of susceptibility to misinformation and interventions to combat misinformation. In every country, participants with a more analytic cognitive style and stronger accuracy-related motivations were better at discerning truth from falsehood; valuing democracy was also associated with greater truth discernment whereas political conservatism was negatively associated with truth discernment in most countries. Subtly prompting people to think about accuracy was broadly effective at improving the veracity of news that people were willing to share, as were minimal digital literacy tips. Finally, crowdsourced accuracy evaluation was able to differentiate true from false headlines with high accuracy in all countries. The consistent patterns we observe suggest that the psychological factors underlying the misinformation challenge are similar across the globe, and that similar solutions may be broadly effective.
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People with more analytic cognitive styles worldwide are more accurate at discerning between authentic and fabricated political videos and true and false headlines related to COVID-19.
“people with more analytic cognitive styles worldwide are more accurate at discerning between authentic and fabricated political videos62 and true and false headlines related to COVID-1963.”
From Human detection of political speech deepfakes across transcripts, audio, and video (2024) · cites this paper as [63]
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- Authors
- Arechar, A. A., Allen, J., Berinsky, A. J., Cole, R., Epstein, Z., Garimella, K., Gully, A., Lu, J. G., Ross, R. M., Stagnaro, M. N., Zhang, Y., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Google (United States) (US)
- MIT Media Lab (US)
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- Macquarie University (AU)
- University of Regina (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Pennycook, Gordon
- Rand, David G.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2023-06-29
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 1502-1513
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4382541699
- Cited by
- 188
- References
- 13
- Citations by year
- 2026: 30 · 2025: 60 · 2024: 66 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 9 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 61.11
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2023-07-18)
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (2047152)
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- John Templeton Foundation
- William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
- Miami Foundation
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- Australian Research Council (DP180102384)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Social Sciences › Communication › Communication and COVID-19 Impact
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Keywords
- misinformation, COVID-19 misinformation, truth discernment, misinformation susceptibility, analytic cognitive style, accuracy motivation, democracy, personal responsibility, government support, digital literacy, misinformation sharing, wisdom of crowds, cross-cultural comparison, online news
- MeSH terms
- COVID-19, Communication, Government, Humans, Motivation, Thinking
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