"Results from Study 2: percentage of headlines participants said they would be likely to share, separately for each combination of headline veracity (true vs. false) and condition (control vs. treatment). For this visualization, we discretize sharing intentions
using the scale midpoint (i.e., 1–3 = 0, 4–6 = 1) to give a more easily interpretable measurement; all analyses are conducted using the full (nondiscretized) scale, and plotting the average (nondiscretized) sharing intentions looks qualitatively similar. For the equivalent plot using mean sharing intentions instead of the discretized percentages, see Figure S1 in the Supplemental Material available online. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals."

Study 2 Graph

"Relationship between the effect of the treatment in Study 2 and the average accuracy rating from participants in the accuracy condition of Study 1 as a function of headline veracity (true vs. false). The dashed line shows the best-fitting regression."

- positive relationship between treatment and discernment
- in treatment condition, sharing intentions for true headlines were significantly higher than false headlines, while in the control, there was no difference
- sharing discernment 2.8 times higher in treatment than in control
- sharing discernment in treatment was not moderated by the Cognitive reflection Test, science knowledge, the Medical Maximizer-Minimizer Scale, or political preferences

University of California, Berkeley

- March 13 to March 15, 2020
- 856 participants (mean age = 47 years, age range = 18–86; 385 men, 463 women, and 8 other/prefer not to answer)
- each participant assigned to one of two conditions
- control: same news-sharing task as study 1
- treatment: participants rated accuracy of an unrelated headline before doing the same news-sharing task
- all other measures were also used in this study: Cognitive Reflection Test, a general science-knowledge quiz, the Medical Maximizer-Minimizer Scale, and political ideology/party alignment
- attention were used as well for this study

Study 2 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.

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