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

Douglas MacFarlane; Li Qian Tay; Mark J Hurlstone; Ullrich K H Ecker

doi:10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.12.005

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

J Appl Res Mem Cogn. 2021 Jun;10(2):248-258. doi: 10.1016/j.jarmac.2020.12.005. Epub 2020 Dec 29.

Authors

Douglas MacFarlane¹, Li Qian Tay¹, Mark J Hurlstone², Ullrich K H Ecker¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Australia.
² Department of Psychology, Lancaster University, UK.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has seen a surge of health misinformation, which has had serious consequences including direct harm and opportunity costs. We investigated (N = 678) the impact of such misinformation on hypothetical demand (i.e., willingness-to-pay) for an unproven treatment, and propensity to promote (i.e., like or share) misinformation online. This is a novel approach, as previous research has used mainly questionnaire-based measures of reasoning. We also tested two interventions to counteract the misinformation, contrasting a tentative refutation based on materials used by health authorities with an enhanced refutation based on best-practice recommendations. We found prior exposure to misinformation increased misinformation promotion (by 18%). Both tentative and enhanced refutations reduced demand (by 18% and 25%, respectively) as well as misinformation promotion (by 29% and 55%). The fact that enhanced refutations were more effective at curbing promotion of misinformation highlights the need for debunking interventions to follow current best-practice guidelines.

Keywords: Coronavirus; Health misinformation; Online sharing; Refutations; Willingness to pay.