Papers related to misinformation from
David Rand and Gordon Pennycook’s research team
Key papers
- The Psychology of Fake News TiCS 2021 [Tweet thread] [15 minute video summary]
- Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI Science 2024 [Tweet thread] [BlueSky thread] [1 hr presentation] [Experimental materials] [Browse the conversations] [Try the bot yourself!]
- Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online Nature 2021 [Tweet thread]
- Understanding and Combatting Online Misinformation Across 16 Countries on Six Continents Nature Human Behaviour 2023 [Tweet thread] [30 minute video presentation]
- Quantifying the Impact of Misinformation and Vaccine-Skeptical Content on Facebook Science 2024 [Tweet thread]
- Differences in misinformation sharing can lead to politically asymmetric sanctions Nature 2024 [BlueSky thread] [Tweet thread]
Hyperlinked Table of Contents: .
Overview of our methodological approach
- A practical guide to doing behavioural research on fake news and misinformation Collabra: Psychology 2021 [Tweet thread]
- REVIEW: Field experiments on social media Current Directions in Psychological Science 2021 [Tweet thread]
- High level of concordance across different news domain quality ratings PNAS Nexus 2023 [Tweet thread]
- How to think about whether misinformation interventions work Nature Human Behaviour 2023 [Tweet thread]
Evaluating interventions to fight misinformation
Popular overview:
The Right Way to Fight Fake News NYTimes 2020 [Tweet thread]
Human-AI dialogues
- Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI Science 2024 [Tweet thread] [BlueSky thread] [1 hr presentation] [Experimental materials] [Browse the conversations] [Try the bot yourself!]
- Just the facts: How dialogues with AI reduce conspiracy beliefs Working paper [BlueSky thread] [Tweet thread]
Accuracy prompts
- REVIEW: Nudging Social Media Sharing Towards Accuracy AAAPSS 2022
- Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online Nature 2021 [Tweet thread] [Scientific American op ed]
- Reducing misinformation sharing at scale using digital accuracy prompt ads Working paper [Tweet thread] [45 minute lecture video]
- Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation Nature Comm 2022 [Tweet thread]
- Thinking more or thinking differently? Using drift-diffusion modeling to illuminate why accuracy prompts decrease misinformation sharing Cognition 2023 [Tweet thread]
- The social media context interferes with truth discernment Science Advances 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Inoculation and accuracy prompting increase accuracy discernment in combination but not alone Nature Human Behavior 2024 [Tweet thread]
- On the Efficacy of Accuracy Prompts Across Partisan Lines: An Adversarial Collaboration Psychological Science 2024 [Tweet thread]
- Examining partisan asymmetries in fake news sharing and the efficacy of accuracy prompt interventions Working paper [Tweet thread]
- Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy nudge intervention Psychological Science 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Developing an accuracy-prompt toolkit to reduce COVID-19 misinformation online HKS Misinformation Review 2021 [Tweet thread] [Medium post]
- Exploring Lightweight Interventions at Posting Time to Reduce the Sharing of Misinformation on Social Media CSCW 2021
- Examining accuracy-prompt efficacy in combination with using colored borders to differentiate news and social content online HKS Misinfo Review 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Accuracy prompts protect professional content moderators from the illusory truth effect PNAS Nexus 2024 [BlueSky thread]
Crowdsourcing
- REVIEW: Crowds Can Effectively Identify Misinformation at Scale Perspectives on Psych Science 2023 [Twitter thread]
- Scaling up fact-checking using the wisdom of crowds Science Advances 2021 [Tweet thread] [Time op ed]
- Birds of a feather don’t fact-check each other: Partisanship and the evaluation of news in Twitter’s Birdwatch crowdsourced fact-checking program CHI’22 [Tweet thread] [Financial Times Op Ed]
- Fighting misinformation on social media using crowdsourced judgments of news source quality PNAS 2019 [Tweet thread] [The Hill op ed]
- Will the crowd game the algorithm? Using layperson judgments to combat misinformation on social media by downranking distrusted sources. CHI '20 [Tweet thread]
- Republicans are flagged more often than Democrats for sharing misinformation on X’s Community Notes Working paper [BlueSky thread]
Warnings/Corrections
- REVIEW: Misinformation warning labels are widely effective: A review of warning effects and their moderating features Current Opinion in Psychology 2023 [Tweet thread]
- The Implied Truth effect: Attaching warnings to a subset of fake news headlines increases perceived accuracy of headlines without warnings Management Science 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Fact-checker warning labels are effective even for those who distrust fact-checkers Nature Human Behaviour 2024 [Twitter thread]
- Labeling AI-Generated Media Online Working paper
- Understanding Americans’ perceived legitimacy of harmful misinformation moderation by expert and layperson juries Working paper
- Partisan consensus and divisions on content moderation of misinformation Working paper
- Perverse Downstream Consequences of Debunking: Being Corrected by Another User for Posting False Political News Increases Subsequent Sharing of Low Quality, Partisan, and Toxic Content in a Twitter Field Experiment CHI’21 [Tweet thread]
- Timing matters when correcting fake news PNAS 2021 [Tweet thread]
- Labeling AI-Generated Content: Promises, Perils, and Future Directions MIT Policy Paper
- What label should be applied to content produced by generative AI? Working paper [Tweet thread]
- Unbundling Digital Media Literacy Tips: Results from Two Experiments Working paper
- Promoting engagement with social fact-checks online Working paper
- Do explanations increase the effectiveness of AI-crowd generated fake news warnings? ICWSM ’22 [Tweet thread]
- You’re definitely wrong, maybe: Correction style has minimal effect on corrections of misinformation online Media and Communication 2021 [Tweet thread]
- Debunking Handbook 2020 [PDF] [Tweet thread]
- How effective are TikTok misinformation debunking videos? HKF Misinformation Review 2023 [Tweet thread]
Source Information
- Emphasizing publishers does not effectively reduce susceptibility to misinformation on social media HKS Misinformation Review 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Displaying News Source Trustworthiness Ratings Reduces Sharing Intentions for False News Posts J Trust and Safety 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Partisan Source Cues and Trust in Global News Working paper
- Depoliticizing Public Media: Polarization and the Dynamics of Media Trust in Poland Working paper
Role of reasoning in detecting versus falling for misinformation
Popular overview: "Why do people fall for fake news?" NYTimes op ed 2019
Experimental papers
- Fake news, fast and slow: Deliberation reduces belief in false (but not true) news headlines JEP:General 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications 2020 [Tweet thread] [Blog post]
- Reasoning about climate change PNAS Nexus 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Emotion may predict susceptibility to fake news but emotion regulation does not seem to help Cognition and Emotion 2022 [Tweet thread]
- Does deliberation decrease belief in conspiracies? Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2022
- Uncommon Errors: Adaptive Intuitions in High-Quality Media Environments Increase Susceptibility to Misinformation Working paper [Tweet thread]
- Emotional language reduces belief in false claims Working paper [Tweet thread]
Correlational papers
- Lazy, not biased: Susceptibility to partisan fake news is better explained by lack of reasoning than by motivated reasoning Cognition 2019
- Cognitive reflection correlates with behavior on Twitter Nature Communications 2021 [Tweet thread]
- Who falls for fake news? The roles of bullshit receptivity, overclaiming, familiarity, and analytic thinking Journal of Personality 2019
- Belief in fake news is associated with delusionality, dogmatism, religious fundamentalism, and reduced analytic thinking Journal of Applied Memory & Cognition 2019
- Beyond “fake news”: Analytic thinking and the detection of false and hyperpartisan news headlines Judgment and Decision Making 2021
- What Makes News Shareable on Social Media? Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Digital literacy is associated with more discerning accuracy judgments but not sharing intentions HKS Misinfo Review 2021 [Tweet thread] [Scientific American op ed]
- Overconfidently conspiratorial: Conspiracy believers are dispositionally overconfident and massively overestimate how much others agree with them Working paper [Twitter thread]
Cross-cultural papers
- Beliefs about COVID-19 in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S.A.: A novel test of political polarization and motivated reasoning Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2022 [Tweet thread]
- Happiness and surprise are associated with worse truth discernment of COVID-19 headlines among social media users in Nigeria HKS Misinformation Review, 2021 [Tweet thread]
- Does Analytic Thinking Insulate Against Pro-Kremlin Disinformation? Evidence from Ukraine. Political Psychology 2022 [Tweet thread] [SPSP Blog post]
Elite Party Cues/Messaging
Measuring exposure to misinformation from political elites on Twitter Nature Communications 2022 [Tweet thread] [Web app to show any Twitter user’s exposure to elite misinfo]
- Partisans’ receptivity to persuasive messaging is undiminished by countervailing party leader cues Nature Human Behaviour 2023 [Tweet thread] [The Hill op ed]
- Correcting Misperceptions of Out-partisans Decreases American Legislators' Support for Undemocratic Practices PNAS 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Elite Party Cues Increase Vaccination Intentions among Republicans PNAS 2021 [Tweet thread] [WashPo Op Ed]
- Pro-Climate Statements from Elon Musk can Persuade Republicans on Climate Change Working Paper
- Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election HKS Misinformation Review 2021 [Tweet thread] [The Hill op ed]
Illusory truth and the effect of repetition on belief
- Prior exposure increases perceived accuracy of fake news JEP:General 2018
- Blatantly false news increases belief in news that is merely implausible Working paper
- Repetition increases perceived truth equally for plausible and implausible statements. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 2019
- Investigating the robustness of the illusory truth effect across individual differences in cognitive ability, need for cognitive closure, and cognitive style. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2019
- Illusory Truth Occurs Even with Incentives for Accuracy Working paper [Tweet thread]
Politically motivated reasoning (or lack thereof)
- Thinking clearly about causal inferences of politically motivated reasoning: Why paradigmatic study designs often prevent causal inference Current Opinion in Behavioral Science 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Rethinking the link between cognitive sophistication and identity-protective bias in political belief formation JEP:General 2021 [Tweet thread]
- No association between numerical ability and politically motivated reasoning in a large US probability sample PNAS 2023
- Bayesian or biased? Analytic thinking and political belief updating Cognition 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Increasing accuracy motivations using moral reframing does not reduce Republicans’ belief in false news HKS Misinfo Review 2023
- Science beliefs, political ideology, and cognitive sophistication JEP:General 2022 [Tweet thread]
- On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence: Implications for conspiratorial, moral, paranormal, political, religious, and science beliefs Judgment and Decision Making 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Sincere or Motivated? Partisan Bias in Non-political Information Processing Judgment and Decision Making, in press
Polarization, echo chambers, and moral outrage
- Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity Science 2024 [Tweet thread]
- Information Gerrymandering and Undemocratic Decisions Nature 2019 [Tweet thread]
- Political Sectarianism in America Science 2020 [Tweet thread]
- Divergent patterns of engagement with partisan and low-quality news across seven social media platforms Working paper [BlueSky thread] [Tweet thread]
- Shared Partisanship Dramatically Increases Social Tie Formation in a Twitter Field Experiment PNAS 2021 [Tweet thread]
- Partisans neither expect nor receive reputational rewards for sharing falsehoods over truth online PNAS Nexus 2024
- Psychological underpinnings of partisan bias in tie formation on social media JEP:General 2024 [Tweet thread]
- Blocking of counter-partisan accounts drives political assortment on Twitter PNAS Nexus 2024 [Tweet thread]
- Misinformation and harmful language are interconnected, rather than distinct, challenges PNAS Nexus 2024 [Tweet thread] [BlueSky thread]
- Interventions Reducing Affective Polarization Do Not Necessarily Improve Anti-Democratic Attitudes Nature Human Behaviour 2022 [Tweet thread]
- From Foe to Friend and Back Again: The Temporal Dynamics of Intra-Party Bias in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Judgment and Decision Making 2019
- Signaling when no one is watching: A reputation heuristics account of outrage and punishment in one-shot anonymous interactions JPSP 2020 [Tweet thread] [NYtimes Op Ed]
- Why Do We Hate Hypocrites? Evidence for a Theory of False Signaling Psych Science 2017 [NYTimes Op Ed]
- Third-party punishment as a costly signal of trustworthiness Nature 2016 [NYTimes Op Ed]
- Dynamic Remodeling of In-Group Bias During the 2008 Presidential Election PNAS 2009
Other papers related to misinformation
- The (Minimal) Persuasive Advantage of Political Video over Text PNAS 2021 [Tweet thread]
- The distorting effects of producer strategies: Why engagement does not reveal consumer preferences for misinformation PNAS 2024 [Tweet thread]
- Quantifying the Potential Persuasive Returns to Political Microtargeting PNAS 2023 [Tweet thread]
- Character Deprecation in Fake News: Is it in Supply or Demand? Group processes and intergroup relations 2021
- Cognitive reflection and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 2019
- Human Cooperation and the Crises of Climate Change, COVID-19, and Misinformation Annual Review of Psychology 2022