January 4, 2021

Refuting Spurious COVID-19 Treatment Claims Reduces Demand and Misinformation Sharing

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Public Health Policy and Practice

Keywords (Tags): public health

A study investigating the impact of COVID-19 misinformation on hypothetical demand (i.e., willingness-to-pay) for an unproven treatment and propensity to spread misinformation online among US adults (N=678) found that prior exposure to misinformation increased misinformation promotion by 18%. The study tested two interventions to counteract the misinformation: a tentative or “diplomatic” refutation based on materials used by health authorities and an enhanced refutation developed from psychological research that explains why the information is false and provides factual information to replace it. Both tentative and enhanced refutations reduced demand (by 18% and 25%, respectively) as well as misinformation promotion (by 29% and 55%). 

MacFarlane et al. (Dec 29, 2020). Refuting Spurious COVID-19 Treatment Claims Reduces Demand and Misinformation Sharing. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.12.005