Summary: New research reveals that short, memory-focused interventions can help individuals resist misinformation more effectively and retain these skills over extended periods, acting as “psychological booster shots.” The study evaluated text-based messages, videos, and interactive games that teach people how to spot and resist misleading information.
Memory-focused interventions showed the greatest long-term effectiveness, suggesting regular psychological “boosters” could enhance misinformation resistance. Researchers emphasize these memory-enhancing methods could significantly benefit public education and digital literacy programs, addressing misinformation challenges in health, politics, and beyond.
Key Facts:
- Memory Matters: The effectiveness of misinformation resistance is directly tied to how well individuals recall initial training interventions.
- Booster Benefits: Regular memory-focused reminders significantly extend the duration and strength of misinformation resistance, similar to medical vaccine boosters.
- Universal Approach: Text, video, and gamified methods were all effective, highlighting the broad potential for scalable anti-misinformation programs.
Source: University of Oxford
A new study has found that targeted psychological interventions can significantly enhance long-term resistance to misinformation.
Dubbed “psychological booster shots,” these interventions improve memory retention and help individuals recognize and resist misleading information more effectively over time.
The study, published in Nature Communications, explores how different approaches, including text-based messages, videos, and online games, can inoculate people against misinformation.
The researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Potsdam and King’s College London conducted five large-scale experiments with over 11,000 participants to examine the durability of these interventions and identify ways to strengthen their effects.
The research team tested three types of misinformation-prevention methods:
- Text-based interventions, where participants read pre-emptive messages explaining common misinformation tactics.
- Video-based interventions, short educational clips that expose the emotional manipulation techniques used in misleading content.
- Gamified interventions, an interactive game that teaches people to spot misinformation tactics by having them create their own (fictional) fake news stories in a safe, controlled environment.
Participants were then exposed to misinformation and evaluated on their ability to detect and resist it over time. The study found that while all three interventions were effective, their effects diminished quickly over time, prompting questions about their long-term impact.
However, providing memory-enhancing “booster” interventions, such as a follow-up reminder or reinforcement message, helped maintain misinformation resistance for a significantly longer period.
The study found that the longevity of misinformation resistance was primarily driven by how well participants remembered the original intervention.
Follow-up reminders or memory-enhancing exercises were also found to significantly extend the effectiveness of the initial intervention, much like medical booster vaccines.
By contrast, the researchers found that boosters that did not focus on memory, but rather focused on increasing participants’ motivation to defend themselves by reminding people of the looming threat of misinformation, did not have any measurable benefits for the longevity of the effects.
Lead researcher Dr. Rakoen Maertens from the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology, said: “Misinformation is a persistent global challenge, influencing everything from climate change debates to vaccine hesitancy.
“Our research shows that just as medical booster shots enhance immunity, psychological booster shots can strengthen people’s resistance to misinformation over time. By integrating memory-boosting techniques into public education and digital literacy programs, we can help people retain these critical skills for much longer.”
Professor Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Bristol and a co-author of the study, emphasised the generality of the findings.
He said: “It is important that the effects of the inoculation interventions were nearly the same for videos, games, and text-based material. This makes it much easier to roll out inoculation at scale and in a broad range of contexts to boost people’s skills in recognizing when they are being misled.”
The study highlights the urgent need for scalable and more durable misinformation interventions and highlights the importance of collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and social media platforms to integrate these insights into public information campaigns.
About this psychology research news
Author: Christopher McIntyre
Source: University of Oxford
Contact: Christopher McIntyre – University of Oxford
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“Psychological Booster Shots Targeting Memory Increase Long-Term Resistance Against Misinformation” by Rakoen Maertens et al. Nature Communications
Abstract
Psychological Booster Shots Targeting Memory Increase Long-Term Resistance Against Misinformation
An increasing number of real-world interventions aim to preemptively protect or inoculate people against misinformation. Inoculation research has demonstrated positive effects on misinformation resilience when measured immediately after treatment via messages, games, or videos.
However, very little is currently known about their long-term effectiveness and the mechanisms by which such treatment effects decay over time.
We start by proposing three possible models on the mechanisms driving resistance to misinformation. We then report five pre-registered longitudinal experiments (Ntotal = 11,759) that investigate the effectiveness of psychological inoculation interventions over time as well as their underlying mechanisms.
We find that text-based and video-based inoculation interventions can remain effective for one month—whereas game-based interventions appear to decay more rapidly—and that memory-enhancing booster interventions can enhance the diminishing effects of counter-misinformation interventions.
Finally, we propose an integrated memory-motivation model, concluding that misinformation researchers would benefit from integrating knowledge from the cognitive science of memory to design better psychological interventions that can counter misinformation durably over time and at-scale.
