‘Bypassing’ misinformation might be as effective as refuting it, finds new study

“Bypassing is an effective technique to counter misinformation because it allows people to arrive at a conclusion based on new information, without necessarily revisiting the prior information,” said Dolores Albarracín, corresponding author of the study, to indianexpress.com over an email interaction. Albarracín is the Director of the Science of Science Communication division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania.

While debunking false information directly with opposing facts does work, it is quite difficult. Since most people do not like being corrected, this runs the risk of alienating them. Also, when you repeat misinformation to debunk it, you run the risk of cementing it in the person’s memory.

How do you bypass misinformation?

For the bypassing technique, you need to first identify a conclusion that is opposite to the wrong belief held by the person in question. For example, if a person believes that vaccines can cause harm, the opposite conclusion would be that “vaccines are safe.”

After this, instead of debunking the “sources” that told this person that vaccines are unsafe, you try to strengthen the conclusion that “vaccines are safe” with related supporting evidence. You could maybe highlight the positive impact of various vaccines and statistics about the number of lives they have saved.

Even though this does not directly contradict the claims that vaccines are unsafe, it could still prod the person towards the conclusions that vaccines have a net positive. While not confronting that person with facts and figures that directly contradict what they hold to be true.

For example, people may fear vaccines because they believe that they cause autism, according to Albarracín. But if you try bypassing this without facts about how vaccines do not cause autism, it could prove to be just as effective if you don’t. Since people can hold many beliefs at once, bringing their attention to positive ones can change their minds.

How the media and policymakers could use this technique

Based on the study, the media and policy makers who want to positively influence attitudes can come up with new techniques for countering misinformation.

“For example, rather than simply countering a couple of popular misconceptions about vaccines, they can more broadly inform the public about all the past successes and positive consequences of vaccines,” added Albarracín.

This could mean that both media and policymakers could invest in non-confrontational techniques to inform the public. But of course, there is a flip side to this, this technique doesn’t work exclusively with combating misinformation.

When indianexpress.com asked Albarracín whether this technique could also be used by bad actors to combat information instead of misinformation, she replied with four words, “Yes, naturally, it can.”

This means that the same bypassing technique could be used to spread misinformation or disinformation. In essence, actual true information can also be bypassed just like information.

Studying the bypassing of misinformation

For the study, the researchers tested out this strategy of bypassing misinformation using three experiments.

In the first two experiments, the participants read a false article that claimed that newly-developed genetically modified corn can cause severe allergic reactions. After that, some participants then read an article that corrected the misinformation in the previous article. Others were given an article that highlighted some of the benefits of genetically modified food, like its role in reducing hunger globally. Essentially bypassing the misinformation.

There was also a control group where some participants did not read a second article and another one where they were given a second article on an unrelated subject.

In the third experiment, they tested a different misinformative article which claimed that genetically modified corn accelerated tumour growth in rats.

During these experiments, the researchers quizzed the participants on their attitudes towards policies that restrict genetically modified food and also, their intention to support these policies.

Based on this, they discovered that both correcting the misinformation and bypassing it led to less support for restrictions on genetically modified food. This led the researchers to conclude that misinformed attitudes can be countered without necessarily directly tackling the points of misinformation.