→	To fight misinformation, policymakers can use debunking (exposing misinformation and explaining why it is false) and prebunking (training people to recognise misinformation and defend themselves against it).
→	In an experiment with more than 5 000 people from four EU countries, debunking and prebunking effectively combated misinformation on climate change and COVID-19.
→	Debunks and prebunks were effective when their messenger was the European Commission.
→	The effectiveness of prebunks from the European Commission did not depend on people’s trust in the EU. 
→	People’s levels of trust in the EU partially affected the effectiveness of debunks from the European Commission in reducing people’s beliefs in and the credibility ratings of false claims.JRC.S.1 - EU Policy Lab: Foresight, Design & Behavioural Insight

BRUNS Hendrik

DESSART François J.

KRAWCZYK Michal Wiktor

SMILLIE Laura

English

JRC Publications Repository

  Behavioural Insights © European Union 2023  JRC133598  How the European Commission can use behavioural insights to combat misinformation  Misinformation during crises Crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change are often accompanied by misinformation and disinformation. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, false or misleading narratives emerged that downplayed the severity of the virus, propagated conspiracy theories about its origins and promoted alleged cures. Vaccination-related misinformation was particularly prevalent [1]. Similarly, climate change has faced ongoing disinformation campaigns aiming to downplay its seriousness, cast doubt on human involvement and question the scientific consensus [2]. It is important to acknowledge the impact of misinformation without exaggerating its scale or significance. Misinformation, especially when spread through coordinated disinformation campaigns, has the potential to influence people s beliefs and actions and significantly disrupt political and societal discussions. In the case of COVID-19, exposure to and belief in misinformation have been linked to reduced adherence to social distancing measures and official guidelines, decreased support for related public policies and lower vaccination rates [1]. Similarly, misinformation undermines public knowledge and acceptance of climate change, thus exacerbating ideological divides and potentially impeding the advancement of effective climate change policies [3]. Combating misinformation The EU recognised the spread of disinformation as a significant threat during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Various measures were implemented to mitigate the spread of disinformation, encompassing both reactive and proactive approaches that aim to enhance individuals  resilience to misinformation. The Joint Research Centre takes a multifaceted approach to understanding and addressing misinformation. This involves employing quantitative text analysis to quantify and classify misinformation [4], leveraging behavioural science to understand the drivers of and develop solutions for misinformation [1], and adopting a broader social science perspective to comprehend s societal, political and technological implications [5], [6]. Behavioural science offers several approaches to combat misinformation [7]. The main types of interventions are prebunks, nudges and debunks (see Box 1 for more information). Highlights   To fight misinformation, policymakers can use debunking (exposing misinformation and explaining why it is false) and prebunking (training people to recognise misinformation and defend themselves against it). In an experiment with more than 5 000 people from four EU countries, debunking and prebunking effectively combated misinformation on climate change and COVID-19. Debunks and prebunks were effective when their messenger was the European Commission. The effectiveness of prebunks from the European Commission did not depend EU.  P levels of trust in the EU partially affected the effectiveness of debunks from the European Commission in reducing beliefs in and the credibility ratings of false claims.  These interventions, while supported by empirical evidence, have limitations. Specifically, they may be less effective for certain individuals. For example, research indicates that accuracy nudges and fact checks (see Box 1) might not effectively influence the beliefs of far-right US partisans [8]. In addition, individuals may ignore these interventions if they have low levels of trust in the institutions (e.g. the European Commission) utilising them to combat misinformation. In the following sections, we explore these boundary conditions for debunks and prebunks. Our findings suggest that both debunking and prebunking are effective tools for the European Commission to consider, with one caveat. Should the European Commission debunk and prebunk? The online experiment We conducted an online experiment involving a representative sample of 5 228 individuals from four Member States: Germany, Greece, Ireland and Poland. Participants were presented a misleading article on either COVID-19 or climate change. They were then assigned to one of three groups: prebunking message (before the article), debunking message (after the article) or no message (with debriefing at the end). The debunking message exposed the falsehoods in the article and outlined the misleading strategies used. The prebunking message did so without directly referring to the specific false claim in the article. The messages were either associated with the European Commission or not associated with it. Examples of the designs used are available in [9]. After being exposed to the misinformation and the interventions, participants were asked about their beliefs in the false claim, their intentions to share the article and their reasons for this, and their rating of the article s credibility. In addition, participants indicated their levels of trust in the EU. We assessed whether debunks and prebunks work, if they work differently when implemented by the European Commission and if they perform worse when implemented by the European Commission for people with low levels of trust in the EU. Debunks and prebunks work The good news is that the debunking and prebunking interventions we tested were effective. Compared with participants who did not receive any intervention, those who saw the debunking message were roughly half as likely to agree with the false claim of the article. The effect was slightly smaller for prebunking interventions. Both interventions successfully reduced the perceived credibility of the false articles and decreased participants  intentions to share them with others in support. However, the interventions did not consistently increase  intentions to share the articles for the purpose of criticising them. In addition, we found that higher levels of trust in the EU were associated with lower levels of belief in the false claim, lower credibility assessments, lower intentions to agree and a higher likelihood of expressing intentions to publicly disagree with the article. Figure 1 provides a visualisation of these effects.  Main 1. The debunking and prebunking interventions we tested were effective at combating misinformation. findings 2. Identifying the European Commission as the messenger of the debunking and prebunking interventions did not affect their effectiveness in combating misinformation. 3. The prebunking interventions originating from the European Commission were effective regardless of people s levels of trust in the EU. The debunking interventions originating from the European Commission were slightly more effective for participants with high levels of trust in the EU. Box 1: How to combat misinformation with behavioural insights We categorise interventions into prebunks, nudges and debunks based on when they are implemented. Prebunks assist people before they encounter misinformation. They aim to educate people and enhance their ability to identify and resist misinformation. One form of prebunking is psychological inoculation, which involves exposing individuals to small doses of misinformation to build cognitive resilience [12]. Gamified approaches are also used in this regard [13]. Nudges involve modifying the decision environment, or the choice architecture, to influence people s behaviour without relying on financial incentives or imposing restrictions [14]. They are employed to create an environment that is not conducive to misinformation. Nudges can include messages encouraging individuals to read the information before sharing it or to actively consider its veracity (known as accuracy nudges) [15]. Debunks, or fact checks, are employed after individuals have been exposed to misinformation. They aim to denounce and correct false or misleading information, and are typically presented in a specific format [16].  Figure 1: Effects of debunking and prebunking interventions (relative to no intervention), the European Commission is the source of the intervention and levels of trust in the EU on the main outcome variables: (a) agreement with the main claim in the article, (b) credibility assessment of the article, (c) intentions to agree with the article and (d) intentions to disagree with the article NB:   indicates the effect of a debunk or prebunk vs. no intervention. source of any intervention vs. no source. EU trust  shows the effect of an increase in levels of trust in the EU equal to 1 standard deviation. Bars represent 95 % confidence intervals. Significance levels are indicated as follows: *** < 0.001, ** < 0.01 and * < 0.05.  Debunks and prebunks coming from the European Commission also work The second finding is that labelling these interventions as coming from the European Commission did not reduce their effectiveness in combating misinformation. This is indicated by the dark blue bars in Figure 1. Debunking from the European Commission works better for people who trust the European Union The finding that labelling the debunks and prebunks as coming from the European Commission did not diminish their effectiveness holds true for both EU-trusting and EU-distrusting individuals, with two exceptions. First, among participants with high levels of trust in the EU, European Commission-labelled debunks were more effective at reducing belief in the misleading article s main claim than neutral debunks were. This suggests that debunking interventions from the European Commission are particularly effective for individuals who trust the EU. Second, the effectiveness of European Commission-labelled debunks in reducing the perceived credibility of the misleading article depended on participants  levels of trust in the EU. For participants who trust the EU, debunking messages from the European Commission were more effective than those without any specified messenger. However, it is important to note that, for individuals who tend to distrust the EU, debunking messages from the European Commission were less effective at reducing the perceived credibility of the false claims than messages without any specified messenger. Moving forward: targeted debunks Our evidence provides two important messages. First, the European Commission can effectively use debunks and prebunks to reduce the spread of misinformation and to affect  beliefs and credibility ratings of articles containing misinformation. Second, targeting debunking messages to citizens with high levels of trust in the EU can enhance their effectiveness in combating misinformation. Our results show that, regarding the credibility ratings of misleading articles, EU-distrusting individuals are less convinced by debunking interventions from the European Commission than by debunks without any messenger. Based on this finding, a practical policy recommendation is to target debunking interventions at EU-trusting individuals to achieve the intended impact. Conversely, to address misinformation among citizens who distrust the EU, it can be advisable to avoid linking the European Commission  with the debunking message. Targeting, which refers to exposing a specific group of people to a specific intervention, is an increasingly discussed approach in behavioural interventions [10], [11]. It is important to consider the limitations of our findings. We designed interventions and misinformation specifically for this study. While they were based on real-world examples, we presented them to participants in a simplified context (for more information, see [9]). Moreover, participants were aware that they were part of an experiment. In reality, interventions can take different forms and the situations in which people encounter misinformation and interventions can vary greatly. This can lead people to behave differently from the participants in our experiment. The main implication is that debunks and prebunks may be less effective than they were in our experiment. Nonetheless, our evidence aligns with other research demonstrating that prebunking and debunking interventions work  when designed in line with best practices  and suggests that targeting can serve as a starting point for more precise and efficient interventions rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to prebunking and debunking. References  [1] H. Bruns, F. J. Dessart -19 Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, JRC130111, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC130111 [2] M. E. Mann, The new climate war: the fight to take back our planet, First edition. New York: Public Affairs, 2021. [3] Annu. Rev. Public Health, vol. 42, no. 1, pp. 1 21, Apr. 2021, doi: 10.1146/annurev-publhealth-090419-102409. [4] B. Kotseva et al. -19 Manuscript submitted, 2023, [Online]. Available: https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/38416 [5] D. Mair et al. ow to put knowledge and reason at the heart of political decision-Union, Luxembourg, JRC117161, 2019. [6] European Commission. Joint Research Centre., Technology and democracy: understanding the influence of online technologies on political behaviour and decision making. LU: Publications Office, 2020. Accessed: Jul. 05, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/709177 [7] S. Van der Linden, Foolproof: why misinformation infects our minds and how to build immunity, First American edition. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2023. [8] C. Pretus, C. Servin, E. A. Harris, W. J. Brady, O. Vilarroya, and J. J. Van Bavelsharing partisan misinformation and resistance to fact-10.31234/osf.io/7k9gx. [9] H. Bruns et al.prebunks and debunks of misinformation. Evidence from OSF Preprints, Jul. 2023, doi: 10.31219/osf.io/vd5qt. [10] Behav. Public Policy, pp. 1 10, 2020, doi: 10.1017/bpp.2020.7. [11] K. Lunz Trujillo, M. Motta, T. Callaghan, and S. Sylvester, Using Psychological Risk Factors to Inform Targeted Political Research Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 2, pp. 464 478, 2021, doi: 10.1177/1065912920907695. [12] S. van der Linden, E. Maibach, J. Cook, A. Leiserowitz, and Science, vol. 358, no. 6367, pp. 1141 1142, 2017, doi: 10.1126/science.aar4533. [13] News about Bad News: Gamified Inoculation Boosts Journal of Cognition, vol. 3, no. 1, p. 2, 2020, doi: 10.5334/joc.91. [14] R. H. Thaler and C. R. Sunstein, Nudge: the final edition, Updated edition. New York: Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2021. [15] G. Pennycook, Z. Epstein, M. Mosleh, A. A. Arechar, D. Nature, vol. 592, no. 7855, pp. 590 595, 2021, doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03344-2. [16] Databrary, 2020, doi: 10.17910/b7.1182.  Authors  and contact  information  The following people contributed to the underlying research: Hendrik Bruns, François J. Dessart, Michal Krawczyk, Stephan Lewandowsky, Myrto Pantazi, Gordon Pennycook, Philipp Schmid, Laura Smillie and René van Bavel. For further information, please contact Hendrik Bruns (hendrik.bruns@ec.europa.eu). Acknowledgements  The work was conducted as part of the exploratory research project ountering COVID misinformation  funded by the European Commission s Joint Research Centre. Copyr ight  © European Union, 2023 [][12] [16] 

How the European Commission can use behavioural insights to combat misinformation

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How the European Commission can use behavioural insights to combat misinformation

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