The ephemeral effects of fact-checks on COVID-19 misperceptions in the United States, Great Britain and Canada

John M. Carey, Andrew M. Guess, Peter J. Loewen, Eric Merkley, Brendan Nyhan (), Joseph B. Phillips and Jason Reifler
Additional contact information
John M. Carey: Dartmouth College
Andrew M. Guess: Princeton University
Peter J. Loewen: University of Toronto
Eric Merkley: University of Toronto
Brendan Nyhan: Dartmouth College
Joseph B. Phillips: University of Kent
Jason Reifler: University of Exeter

Nature Human Behaviour, 2022, vol. 6, issue 2, 236-243

Abstract: Abstract Widespread misperceptions about COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus threaten to exacerbate the severity of the pandemic. We conducted preregistered survey experiments in the United States, Great Britain and Canada examining the effectiveness of fact-checks that seek to correct these false or unsupported beliefs. Across three countries with differing levels of political conflict over the pandemic response, we demonstrate that fact-checks reduce targeted misperceptions, especially among the groups who are most vulnerable to these claims, and have minimal spillover effects on the accuracy of related beliefs. However, these reductions in COVID-19 misperception beliefs do not persist over time in panel data even after repeated exposure. These results suggest that fact-checks can successfully change the COVID-19 beliefs of the people who would benefit from them most but that their effects are ephemeral.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01278-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:6:y:2022:i:2:d:10.1038_s41562-021-01278-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-021-01278-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().