"Results from Study 1: percentage of “yes” responses for each combination of headline veracity (true vs. false) and condition (accuracy = “To the best of your knowledge, is the claim in the above headline accurate?” vs. sharing = “Would you consider sharing this story online (for example, through Facebook or Twitter)?”). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals."

Study 1 Graph

Study 1 Table

- accuracy discernment was higher than sharing discernment; for false headlines, 32.4% of participants were more likely to share them than to rate them as true
- scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test were positively correlated with accuracy discernment and sharing discernment
- scores on the science knowledge quiz were also positively correlated with accuracy discernment and sharing discernment 
- COVID-19 concern and how often participants checked news related to COVID-19 was negatively correlated with scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test and preference for the republican Party, and positively correlated with being a medical maximizer and science knowledge

University of California, Berkeley

- March 12, 2020
- 853 participants (mean age = 46 years, age range = 18–90; 357 men, 482 women, and 14 other/prefer not to answer)
- all participants use Facebook or Twitter
- got 15 true and 15 false news headlines from the Harvard Global Health Institute
- headlines were presented in the form of Facebook posts 
- participants were split into two random groups "accuracy" vs "sharing"
- those in the "accuracy" group were asked: “To the best of your knowledge, is the
claim in the above headline accurate?” 
- those in the "sharing" group were asked: “Would you consider sharing this story online (for example, through Facebook or Twitter?)”
- before the task, participants were asked questions about the pandemic: how concerned they are about COVID-19 and how often they check news related to COVID-19
- participants were also given a Cognitive Reflection Test, a general science-knowledge quiz, and Medical Maximizer-Minimizer Scale 
- political ideology and party alignment were also noted
- attention checks were used to ensure participants are actually doing the tasks (asking what the article is about / where it was published)

Study 1 Methods

Pennycook, G., McPhetres, J., Zhang, Y., Lu, J. G., & Rand, D. G. (2020). Fighting COVID-19 misinformation on social media: Experimental evidence for a scalable accuracy-nudge intervention. Psychological science, 31(7), 770-780.

Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation on
Social Media: Experimental Evidence for
a Scalable Accuracy-Nudge Intervention

Study 1 Results

Main outcome that they looked at was discernment. Discernment is the difference in accuracy judgment of sharing intentions between the true and false headlines, calculated by taking the fraction of what the participants believed were true or would have shared of the false headlines subtracted from the fraction of what the participants believed were true or would have shared of the true headlines.

"For example, an individual who shared 9 out of 15 true headlines and 12 out of 15 false headlines would have a discernment level of −.2 (i.e., .6 – .8), whereas an individual who shared 9 out of 15 true headlines and 3 out of 15 false headlines would have a discernment level of .4 (i.e., .6 – .2)."

A higher discernment score means the participant was better at discerning between the true and false headlines. 

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