Is 'bypassing' a better way to battle misinformation? Researchers say new approach has advantages over the standard

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Misinformation can lead to socially detrimental behavior, which makes finding ways to combat its effects a matter of crucial public concern. A new paper by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General explores an innovative approach to countering the impact of factually incorrect information called "bypassing," and finds that it may have advantages over the standard approach of correcting inaccurate statements.

"The gold standard for tackling misinformation is a correction that factually contradicts the misinformation" by directly refuting the claim, write former APPC postdoctoral fellow Javier A. Granados Samayoa, a research associate in the Social Action Lab at the University of Pennsylvania, and Dolores Albarracín, Amy Gutmann Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor and director of APPC's Communication Science division, in the study "Bypassing versus correcting misinformation: Efficacy and fundamental processes." Corrections can work, but countering misinformation this way is an uphill battle: people don't like to be contradicted, and a belief, once accepted, can be difficult to dislodge.

Bypassing works differently. Rather than directly addressing the misinformation, this strategy involves offering accurate information that has an implication opposite to that of the misinformation. For example, faced with the factually incorrect statement "genetically modified foods have health risks," a bypassing approach might highlight the fact that genetically modified foods help the bee population. This counters the negative implication of the misinformation with positive implications, without taking the difficult path of confrontation.

Could bypassing be the stronger approach?

Research into the bypassing strategy is relatively new. In a 2023 study published in Scientific Reports, co-authors Albarracín and Christopher (CJ) Calabrese, a former APPC postdoctoral fellow now at Clemson University, found evidence that bypassing misinformation could be as effective as debunking it at changing someone's mind.

For the new Journal of Experimental Psychology: General study, Granados Samayoa and Albarracín tested whether bypassing can actually be superior to correction at changing attitudes and intentions, and under what circumstances. In six pre-registered experiments, the researchers compared the efficacy of corrections and bypassing messages at reducing the effect of factually incorrect news headlines under a variety of different conditions.

Among other variables, they examined the relative effectiveness of the approaches when people form beliefs about the truth of a claim upon receiving misinformation, as opposed to forming attitudes about how good or bad the object of the claim is. For example, someone might form a belief that genetically modified foods have health risks without necessarily forming the attitude that genetically modified foods are bad.

What the authors found, says Granados Samayoa, is that "bypassing can generally be superior to correction, specifically in situations when people are focused on forming beliefs, but not attitudes, about the information they encounter." This is because "when an attitude is formed, it serves as an anchor for a person's judgment of future claims. When a belief is formed, there is more room for influence, and a bypassing message generally exerts more."

This finding, says Albarracín, "should help inform strategies for responding to misinformation and changing people's attitudes and behavioral intentions." She cautions that the results should not be taken as evidence that bypassing is superior to correction under all circumstances. Rather, she says, "more exploration of the conditions that favor each strategy will help develop a more complete understanding of the cognitive dynamics of belief and attitude change."

More information: Javier A. Granados Samayoa et al, Bypassing versus correcting misinformation: Efficacy and fundamental processes., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (2024). DOI: 10.1037/xge0001687

Journal information: Scientific Reports , Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

Provided by Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania