Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online
Pennycook and colleagues report four survey experiments and a field experiment on a social network. Their abstract states that whether a headline is true has little effect on whether people say they would share it, although it strongly affects their judgments of its accuracy, and that most participants say it matters to share only accurate news. A subtle nudge toward accuracy improved the quality of the news people subsequently shared. The authors conclude that people often share misinformation because their attention is on other factors, not on accuracy.
Pennycook and colleagues report four survey experiments and a field experiment on a social network. Their abstract states that whether a headline is true has little effect on whether people say they would share it, although it strongly affects their judgments of its accuracy, and that most participants say it matters to share only accurate news. A subtle nudge toward accuracy improved the quality of the news people subsequently shared. The authors conclude that people often share misinformation because their attention is on other factors, not on accuracy.
Written from the abstract, MIT Media Lab publication record and Crossref record, 2026-10-31.
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Pennycook, G., Epstein, Z., Mosleh, M., Arechar, A. A., Eckles, D., & Rand, D. G. (2021). Shifting attention to accuracy can reduce misinformation online. Nature, 592(7855), 590-595. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2