Long-lasting Effects of a Prosocial Counter-Misinformation Intervention in an Informational Autocracy

AbstractConservative voters have difficulties distinguishing fake from real news. In Hungarian representative data (N = 991) we found voters of the reigning populist, conservative party rated misinformation more accurate than real ones independently from the news’ political leaning and content. The question arises: what can psychological science do to make government supporters more motivated and capable in the long run to identify misinformation in this cultural, political, and historical context? Designing scalable misinformation-reducing interventions that have a sustainable effect in the long term is a challenge researchers are struggling to surmount. The present work demonstrates a social psychological randomized controlled trial intervention in which young adults (N = 473) were placed in an expert role and were requested to write a letter to digitally less competent relatives explaining six strategies that can help them to discern misinformation. Compared to the active control group, there was an immediate (d = 0.27) and four weeks later a general long-term effect (d = 0.30) on distinguishing fake news from real ones. This long-term effect was especially salient among participants who support the conservative populist government (d = 0.48). The present work is among the first providing comprehensive quantitative analysis on the gravity of the misinformation problem in an Eastern European country with a pioneering intervention attempt that can be appropriate to a context where misinformation appears regularly in the mainstream media.