The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings
What can be done to combat political misinformation? One prominent intervention involves attaching warnings to headlines of news stories that have been disputed by third-party fact-checkers. Here we demonstrate a hitherto unappreciated potential consequence of such a warning: an implied truth effect...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
|---|---|
| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
2021
|
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130380 |
| _version_ | 1811079422489395200 |
|---|---|
| author | Pennycook, Gordon Bear, Adam Collins, Evan T. Rand, David Gertler |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Pennycook, Gordon Bear, Adam Collins, Evan T. Rand, David Gertler |
| author_sort | Pennycook, Gordon |
| collection | MIT |
| description | What can be done to combat political misinformation? One prominent intervention involves attaching warnings to headlines of news stories that have been disputed by third-party fact-checkers. Here we demonstrate a hitherto unappreciated potential consequence of such a warning: an implied truth effect, whereby false headlines that fail to get tagged are considered validated and thus are seen as more accurate. With a formal model, we demonstrate that Bayesian belief updating can lead to such an implied truth effect. In Study 1 (n = 5,271 MTurkers), we find that although warnings do lead to a modest reduction in perceived accuracy of false headlines relative to a control condition (particularly for politically concordant headlines), we also observed the hypothesized implied truth effect: the presence of warnings caused untagged headlines to be seen as more accurate than in the control. In Study 2 (n = 1,568 MTurkers), we find the same effects in the context of decisions about which headlines to consider sharing on social media. We also find that attaching verifications to some true headlines—which removes the ambiguity about whether untagged headlines have not been checked or have been verified—eliminates, and in fact slightly reverses, the implied truth effect. Together these results contest theories of motivated reasoning while identifying a potential challenge for the policy of using warning tags to fight misinformation—a challenge that is particularly concerning given that it is much easier to produce misinformation than it is to debunk it. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:14:46Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/130380 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:14:46Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1303802022-09-27T18:08:03Z The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings Pennycook, Gordon Bear, Adam Collins, Evan T. Rand, David Gertler Sloan School of Management Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society What can be done to combat political misinformation? One prominent intervention involves attaching warnings to headlines of news stories that have been disputed by third-party fact-checkers. Here we demonstrate a hitherto unappreciated potential consequence of such a warning: an implied truth effect, whereby false headlines that fail to get tagged are considered validated and thus are seen as more accurate. With a formal model, we demonstrate that Bayesian belief updating can lead to such an implied truth effect. In Study 1 (n = 5,271 MTurkers), we find that although warnings do lead to a modest reduction in perceived accuracy of false headlines relative to a control condition (particularly for politically concordant headlines), we also observed the hypothesized implied truth effect: the presence of warnings caused untagged headlines to be seen as more accurate than in the control. In Study 2 (n = 1,568 MTurkers), we find the same effects in the context of decisions about which headlines to consider sharing on social media. We also find that attaching verifications to some true headlines—which removes the ambiguity about whether untagged headlines have not been checked or have been verified—eliminates, and in fact slightly reverses, the implied truth effect. Together these results contest theories of motivated reasoning while identifying a potential challenge for the policy of using warning tags to fight misinformation—a challenge that is particularly concerning given that it is much easier to produce misinformation than it is to debunk it. 2021-04-05T21:26:44Z 2021-04-05T21:26:44Z 2020-11 2021-03-19T13:16:18Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0025-1909 1526-5501 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130380 Pennycook, Gordon et al. "The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings." Management Science 66, 11 (November 2020): 4944–4957 © 2020 The Author(s) en http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3478 Management Science Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) INFORMS |
| spellingShingle | Pennycook, Gordon Bear, Adam Collins, Evan T. Rand, David Gertler The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings |
| title | The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings |
| title_full | The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings |
| title_fullStr | The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings |
| title_full_unstemmed | The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings |
| title_short | The Implied Truth Effect: Attaching Warnings to a Subset of Fake News Headlines Increases Perceived Accuracy of Headlines Without Warnings |
| title_sort | implied truth effect attaching warnings to a subset of fake news headlines increases perceived accuracy of headlines without warnings |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/130380 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT pennycookgordon theimpliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT bearadam theimpliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT collinsevant theimpliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT randdavidgertler theimpliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT pennycookgordon impliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT bearadam impliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT collinsevant impliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings AT randdavidgertler impliedtrutheffectattachingwarningstoasubsetoffakenewsheadlinesincreasesperceivedaccuracyofheadlineswithoutwarnings |