Reducing the spread of fake news by shifting attention to accuracy: Meta-analytic evidence of replicability and generalizability

Simply failing to consider accuracy when deciding what to share on social media has been shown to play an important role in the spread of online misinformation. Interventions that shift users’ attention towards the concept of accuracy – accuracy prompts or nudges – are a promising approach to improve the quality of news content that users share and therefore reduce misinformation online. Here we test the replicability and generalizability of this effect among American participants by conducting a meta-analysis of all 20 accuracy prompt survey experiments (total N=26,863) completed by our group between 2017 and 2020. This approach avoids common meta-analysis pitfalls by including all studies regardless of outcome (avoiding selection bias) and using identical analyses across all studies (avoiding researcher degrees of freedom and p-hacking). The experiments used a wide range of different accuracy prompts tested using a large variety of headline sets and with participants recruited from qualitatively different subject pools. We find that overall, accuracy prompts increased sharing discernment (difference in sharing intentions for true relative to false headlines) by 72% relative to the control, and that this effect was primarily driven by reducing sharing intentions for false headlines (10% reduction relative to the control). These effects were not unique to a particular implementation of accuracy prompt, and were roughly twice as large when multiple accuracy prompts were combined. The magnitude of the accuracy prompt effect on sharing discernment did not significantly differ for headlines about politics versus COVID-19, and was larger for headline sets where users were less likely to distinguish between true and false headlines at baseline. With respect to individual-level variables, the treatment effect on sharing discernment was not robustly moderated by gender, race, political ideology, education, or value explicitly placed on accuracy, and was significantly larger for participants who were older, higher on cognitive reflection, and who passed more attention check questions. These results suggest that accuracy prompt effects are replicable and generalize across prompts and headlines, and thus offer a promising approach for fighting against misinformation.