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We report the results of a preregistered study that tested the effectiveness of inoculating participants against Islamophobic and radical-Islamist disinformation. Participants in the experimental (inoculation) condition watched a video that explained common rhetorical markers of radical-Islamist and Islamophobic disinformation that had been identified in an analysis of YouTube content. The information was presented in a neutral context not involving Islam and focused on analysis of the misleading argumentation. The control group watched a video about an unrelated topic. Participants were then exposed to target videos with "gateway" content that constituted an entry point to potential Islamist or Islamophobic radicalization. Both videos contained numerous items of disinformation. Participants then answered a variety of questions such as how likely they were to share the video, their level of agreement, and their perceived accuracy of the video. Participants who had received the inoculation displayed less agreement with the video content, perceived the video as less reliable, and were less likely to share it in comparison with participants in the control group. The study provides support for the use of argument-based inoculation in combatting extremist messages.

In recent years, many kinds of interventions have been developed that seek to reduce susceptibility to misinformation. In two preregistered longitudinal studies (N1 = 503, N2 = 673), we leverage two previously validated "inoculation" interventions (a video and a game) to address two important questions in misinformation interventions research: (1) whether displaying additional stimuli (such as videos unrelated to misinformation) alongside an intervention interferes with its effectiveness, and (2) whether administering an immediate posttest (in the form of a social media post evaluation task after the intervention) plays a role in the longevity of the intervention. We find no evidence that other stimuli interfere with intervention efficacy, but strong evidence that immediate posttests strengthen the learnings from the intervention. In study 1, we find that 48 h after watching a video, participants who received an immediate posttest continued to be significantly better at discerning untrustworthy social media posts from neutral ones than the control group (d = 0.416, p =.007), whereas participants who only received a posttest 48 h later showed no differences with a control (d = 0.010, p =.854). In study 2, we observe highly similar results for a gamified intervention, and provide evidence for a causal mechanism: immediate posttests help strengthen people's memory of the lessons learned in the intervention. We argue that the active rehearsal and application of relevant information are therefore requirements for the longevity of learning‐based misinformation interventions, which has substantial implications for their scalability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health communicators are faced with the challenge that people can hesitate vaccines for different reasons. Our aim was to identify and describe the qualities of distinct COVID-19 and influenza vaccine-hesitancy subgroups to facilitate the development of tailored vaccine-hesitancy communication. In two studies, we used agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis to identify COVID-19 (N = 554) and influenza (N = 539) vaccine-hesitancy subgroups in the general population based on nine vaccine hesitancy-related variables (intent to get vaccinated, perceived vaccine safety, perceived vaccine efficacy, perceived disease threat, perceived vaccination responsibility, perceived vaccination convenience, distrust in authorities, conspiracy mentality, and reliance on anecdotal testimonies). We identified and described six distinct COVID-19 vaccine-hesitancy subgroups (the Vaccination Positive, the Ambivalent, the Fearing Skeptic, the Unconvinced, the Constrained Skeptic, and the Vaccination Opponent), and three influenza vaccine-hesitancy subgroups (the Vaccination Positive, the Complacent, and the Vaccination Opponent), with different levels of hesitancy. We discuss the implications of the results for health communicators. Our results shed light on the (dis)similarities between people who hesitate COVID-19 and influenza vaccines and suggest that there is greater variety in hesitancy concerning COVID-19 vaccinations than influenza vaccinations. These findings can be used to design and test tailored vaccination messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Algorithms for approximate Bayesian inference, such as those based on sampling (i.e., Monte Carlo methods), provide a natural source of models of how people may deal with uncertainty with limited cognitive resources. Here, we consider the idea that individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) may be usefully modeled in terms of the number of samples, or "particles," available to perform inference. To test this idea, we focus on two recent experiments that report positive associations between WMC and two distinct aspects of categorization performance: the ability to learn novel categories, and the ability to switch between different categorization strategies ("knowledge restructuring"). In favor of the idea of modeling WMC as a number of particles, we show that a single model can reproduce both experimental results by varying the number of particles--increasing the number of particles leads to both faster category learning and improved strategy-switching. Furthermore, when we fit the model to individual participants, we found a positive association between WMC and best-fit number of particles for strategy switching. However, no association between WMC and best-fit number of particles was found for category learning. These results are discussed in the context of the general challenge of disentangling the contributions of different potential sources of behavioral variability.

In today’s polarized political climate, researchers who combat mistruths have come under attack and been labelled as unelected arbiters of truth. But the fight against misinformation is valid, warranted and urgently required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We introduce and report early stage testing of a novel, multicomponent intervention that can be used by healthcare professionals (HCPs) to address false or misleading antivaccination arguments while maintaining empathy for and understanding of people's motivations to believe misinformation: the "Empathetic Refutational Interview" (ERI). Method:We conducted four experiments in 2022 with participants whowere predominantly negative or on the fence about vaccination (total n= 2,545) to test four steps for tailoring an HCP's response to a vaccine-hesitant individual: (a) elicit their concerns, (b) affirm their values and beliefs to the extent possible, (c) refute the misinformed beliefs in their reasoning in a way that is tailored to their psychological motivations, and (d) provide factual information about vaccines. Each of the stepswas tested against active control conditions, with participants randomized to conditions. Results: Overall, compared to controls, we found that observing steps of the ERI produced small effects on increasing vaccine acceptance and lowering support for antivaccination arguments. Critically, an HCP who affirmed participants' concerns generated significantly more support for their refutations and subsequent information, with large effects compared to controls. In addition, participants found tailored refutations (compared to control responses) more compelling, and displayed more trust and openness toward the HCP giving them. Conclusions: The ERI can potentially be leveraged and tested further as a tailored communication tool for HCPs to refute antivaccination misconceptions while maintaining trust and rapport with patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anti‐science attitudes can be resilient to scientific evidence if they are rooted in psychological motives. One such motive is trait reactance, which refers to the need to react with opposition when one's freedom of choice has been threatened. In three studies, we investigated trait reactance as a psychological motivation to reject vaccination. In the longitudinal studies (n = 199; 293), we examined if trait reactance measured before the COVID‐19 pandemic was related to people's willingness to get vaccinated against COVID‐19 up to 2 years later during the pandemic. In the experimental study (n = 398), we tested whether trait reactance makes anti‐vaccination attitudes more resistant to information and whether this resistance can be mitigated by framing the information to minimize the risk of triggering state reactance. The longitudinal studies showed that higher trait reactance before the COVID‐19 pandemic was related to lower willingness to get vaccinated against COVID‐19. Our experimental study indicated that highly reactant individuals' willingness to vaccinate was unaffected by the amount and framing of the information provided. Trait reactance has a strong and durable impact on vaccination willingness. This highlights the importance of considering the role of trait reactance in people's vaccination‐related decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People frequently continue to use inaccurate information in their reasoning even after a credible retraction has been presented. This phenomenon is often referred to as the continued influence effect of misinformation. The repetition of the original misconception within a retraction could contribute to this phenomenon, as it could inadvertently make the "myth" more familiar--and familiar information is more likely to be accepted as true. From a dual-process perspective, familiarity-based acceptance of myths is most likely to occur in the absence of strategic memory processes. Thus, we examined factors known to affect whether strategic memory processes can be utilized: age, detail, and time. Participants rated their belief in various statements of unclear veracity, and facts were subsequently affirmed and myths were retracted. Participants then rerated their belief either immediately or after a delay. We compared groups of young and older participants, and we manipulated the amount of detail presented in the affirmative or corrective explanations, as well as the retention interval between encoding and a retrieval attempt. We found that (a) older adults over the age of 65 were worse at sustaining their postcorrection belief that myths were inaccurate, (b) a greater level of explanatory detail promoted more sustained belief change, and (c) fact affirmations promoted more sustained belief change in comparison with myth retractions over the course of 1 week (but not over 3 weeks), This supports the notion that familiarity is indeed a driver of continued influence effects.