Publications by authors named "Lucy H Butler"

Nudge-based misinformation interventions are presented as cheap and effective ways to reduce the spread of misinformation online. However, despite online information environments typically containing relatively low volumes of misinformation, most studies testing the effectiveness of nudge interventions present equal proportions of true and false information. As the effectiveness of nudges can be highly context-dependent, it is imperative to validate the effectiveness of nudge-based interventions in environments with more realistic proportions of misinformation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Misinformation on social media is a pervasive challenge. In this study (N = 415) a social-media simulation was used to test two potential interventions for countering misinformation: a credibility badge and a social norm. The credibility badge was implemented by associating accounts, including participants', with a credibility score.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Given the potential negative impact reliance on misinformation can have, substantial effort has gone into understanding the factors that influence misinformation belief and propagation. However, despite the rise of social media often being cited as a fundamental driver of misinformation exposure and false beliefs, how people process misinformation on social media platforms has been under-investigated. This is partially due to a lack of adaptable and ecologically valid social media testing paradigms, resulting in an over-reliance on survey software and questionnaire-based measures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Given that being misinformed can have negative ramifications, finding optimal corrective techniques has become a key focus of research. In recent years, several divergent correction formats have been proposed as superior based on distinct theoretical frameworks. However, these correction formats have not been compared in controlled settings, so the suggested superiority of each format remains speculative.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Misinformation often has an ongoing effect on people's memory and inferential reasoning even after clear corrections are provided; this is known as the continued influence effect. In pursuit of more effective corrections, one factor that has not yet been investigated systematically is the narrative versus non-narrative format of the correction. Some scholars have suggested that a narrative format facilitates comprehension and retention of complex information and may serve to overcome resistance to worldview-dissonant corrections.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The COVID-19 pandemic has understandably dominated public discourse, crowding out other important issues such as climate change. Currently, if climate change enters the arena of public debate, it primarily does so in direct relation to the pandemic. In two experiments, we investigated (1) whether portraying the response to the COVID-19 threat as a "trial run" for future climate action would increase climate-change concern and mitigation support, and (2) whether portraying climate change as a concern that needs to take a "back seat" while focus lies on economic recovery would decrease climate-change concern and mitigation support.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF