Disinformation is false information spread intentionally, and it is particularly harmful for public health. We conducted three preregistered experiments ( = 1,568) investigating how to discredit dubious health sources and disinformation attributed to them. Experiments 1 and 2 used cancer information and recruited representative U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe backfire effect is when a correction increases belief in the very misconception it is attempting to correct, and it is often used as a reason not to correct misinformation. The current study aimed to test whether correcting misinformation increases belief more than a no-correction control. Furthermore, we aimed to examine whether item-level differences in backfire rates were associated with test-retest reliability or theoretically meaningful factors.
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