Direct Denial or Positive-Negative Rumor Rebuttal? The Effects of Two Types of Rumor Rebuttal and Their Psychological Mechanisms

Abstract

This study used a single-factor online experiment to explore&nbsp;the&nbsp;effect&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;presentation&nbsp;of&nbsp;rumor&nbsp;rebuttal&nbsp;information (direct&nbsp;rebuttal&nbsp;vs. positive-negative&nbsp;rebuttal) on&nbsp;rumor&nbsp;credibility, and&nbsp;the&nbsp;role&nbsp;of&nbsp;emotion and depth&nbsp;of&nbsp;information processing in this process.&nbsp;The&nbsp;findings revealed that&nbsp;direct&nbsp;rebuttal&nbsp;significantly reduced&nbsp;rumor&nbsp;credibility to subjects when compared to no&nbsp;rebuttal, while no significant&nbsp;effect&nbsp;was found in positive-negative&nbsp;rebuttal. In addition, positive emotions, negative emotions, and&nbsp;the&nbsp;depth&nbsp;of&nbsp;information processing triggered by&nbsp;rumors&nbsp;partially mediated&nbsp;the&nbsp;effect&nbsp;of&nbsp;direct&nbsp;rebuttal&nbsp;on&nbsp;rumor&nbsp;credibility. This suggests that&nbsp;the&nbsp;method&nbsp;of&nbsp;rebuttal&nbsp;can significantly influence people&#39;s perceptions&nbsp;of&nbsp;rumors, and that&nbsp;direct&nbsp;denial&nbsp;may be more&nbsp;effective&nbsp;than&nbsp;rebuttal&nbsp;through detailed explanations containing both positive and negative information, which is practically valuable for&nbsp;effective&nbsp;rebuttals&nbsp;in social governance.</p