Which counters misinformation better: facts or logic?

What’s more effective in countering misinformation – facts of logic? Along with Emily Vraga, Sojung Kim and Leticia Bode, we’ve just published a new study, Testing the Effectiveness of Correction Placement and Type on Instagram, which explores this question. If you don’t have library access to the International Journal of Press/Politics, here is an open-access pre-press of the study.

In this research, we were interested in two approaches to countering misinformation: fact-based or logic-based corrections. Fact-based corrections show how misinformation is false by providing accurate information. Logic-based corrections explain how misinformation misleads by exposing its rhetorical techniques or logical fallacies. Most research into misinformation tends to focus on fact-based corrections, and most fact-checkers are, well, fact-based.

In my Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change book, I combine both methods to counter climate myths. For example, here is a page from the book where I counter the “CO2 is plant food so it’s good to emit CO2” myth:

I use the Fact-Myth-Fallacy structure throughout the book. Each debunking begins by explaining a key fact about climate change. Then after introducing the myth, I explain the fallacy the myth uses to distort the facts. In the case of the “plant food myth”, the fallacy is oversimplification.

I also use cartoons to illustrate both fact and fallacy. To reinforce the fact that plants need the right conditions to flourish, I used the analogy of a prickly (pun intended) plant. To reinforce the fallacy explanation, I use the parallel argument of ice cream. Credit where credit is due, I borrowed (stole? homaged?) the ice cream analogy from Sarah Green’s Denial101x lecture on the plant food myth.

While we’re on the topic of the Denial101x MOOC, note that the Fact-Myth-Fallacy structure is used in all our video lectures. The fact/fallacy of every climate myth is summarized neatly in a single fact-myth-fallacy page – a one-stop-shop resource for anyone needing a quick response on climate misinformation.

But back to the research! For our experiment, we chose for our myth the argument “CO2 is plant food so emitting CO2 is good.” As there wasn’t much (any?) research into debunking misinformation on Instagram, we decided to test the myth and our corrections in the form of Instagram posts. Here’s what our misinformation post looked like:

In our experiment, our fact-based correction explained how plants need a variety of conditions – including a comfortable temperature range and steady water supply – to flourish. We reinforced the factual explanation with the prickly pool plant cartoon.

The logic-based correction explained the fallacy of oversimplification, ignoring the complex set of factors required for healthy plant growth. It’s like eating ice cream and saying… well, it’s all in the cartoon:

In our experiment, we divided the participants into five groups. One group was shown only the misinformation. The other groups were shown either the fact-based or logic-based correction. We also manipulated the order in which participants saw the misinformation and correction. They either saw the correction before the misinformation (prebunking) or after the misinformation (debunking). After the Instagram posts, we measured their belief in the plant food climate myth. The following bar chart shows each group’s belief in the myth (the lower the value, the better as this is a measurement of misperceptions):

The overall result is that logic outperformed facts. Go team logic! But it’s important to dig deeper into why. Whether the fact-based correction was effective depended on whether it came before or after the myth. If the facts came last, they were just as effective as logic in reducing misperceptions. But if the myth came last, it cancelled out any possible good effect that the facts might have had.

In contrast, logic was effective regardless of ordering. This indicates that explaining the rhetorical technique that a myth uses is potentially more robust in neutralizing misinformation, whereas the effectiveness of facts depend on what order people receive information.

This is not to say that countering misinformation with facts is unimportant. On the contrary, my approach whenever possible is to have my cake and eat it too, countering misinformation with both facts and logic. But this research does highlight how logic and critical thinking – an under-utilized and under-studied approach – is a powerful tool in neutralizing misinformation.

Again, you can read the full paper at http://sks.to/factvslogic.