by Debunking conspiracy theories with counter-arguments is often a fruitless effort – but according to a new scientific review, there may be alternative strategies that can successfully push back against conspiracy beliefs.
Having already grown over the past 10 years, interest in conspiracy theories has exploded during the pandemic, when failure to follow public health recommendations has been sometimes associated with conspiracy beliefs (opens in a new tab). For example, supporters of the anti vax movement (opens in a new tab) may avoid getting vaccinated or having their children vaccinated on the pretext that certain dangerous results of vaccination are concealed. Although increasingly present in public discourse, conspiracy theories have proven to be a difficult mindset to change.
“I wouldn’t have a doctorate in this project if conspiracy theories were easy to counter,” said Cian O’Mahony (opens in a new tab)PhD student in psychology at University College Cork in Ireland who led the systematic review reported in the journal PLOS One (opens in a new tab). The review does not reveal “a magic bullet” to counter conspiracy theories, he said, but “we have found some interesting avenues for future research that we should follow up.”
This review is the first of its kind, as previous studies have focused more on understanding the psychological underpinnings of conspiracy beliefs (opens in a new tab), O’Mahony told Live Science. Research on the design of interventions to combat conspiracy is still relatively new. “When we did the review, we found that there were only a handful of papers that were actually published on this topic,” he said.
Related: The belief that COVID-19 was a hoax is a gateway drug to other conspiracy theories
O’Mahony described a conspiracy theory as “a belief that explains events by invoking malicious groups working in secret”. The role of some underground organizations distinguishes conspiracy theories from general disinformation and “fake news”. For example, the statement “Bigfoot exists‘ wouldn’t be a conspiracy theory unless qualified by adding ‘and a particular organization is trying to keep it a secret’.
The new review suggested that many methods for changing conspiratorial beliefs are ineffective, especially those that involve directly challenging a person’s beliefs after they are already ingrained. However, the review also highlighted some emerging practices that could be used successfully against conspiracy theories.
Most promising was training to teach people to critically analyze information in order to distinguish pseudoscience from reality. However, even generic “analytical priming” of a study participant’s mental state to be more alert – by presenting them with text in a hard-to-read font, for example – has proven reduce the likelihood of falling for a conspiracy theory he saw soon after. After.
Finally, “information inoculation” can also be effective. In this strategy, counterarguments to the conspiracy theory are presented alongside a warning that exposure to misinformation must follow, before the subject is exposed to the theory. It’s like how a vaccine exposes a person to a fragment or weakened form of a virus so that they’re resistant to disease when they encounter it.
(Unfortunately, this same approach can also be used to propagate a conspiracy, if someone “inoculates” a conspiratorial explanation first, O’Mahony noted.)
“While not overly optimistic, this review highlights several potentially promising avenues of research,” Iris Zeželj (opens in a new tab)a professor of social psychology at the University of Belgrade who was not involved in the new review, said in an email.
However, she highlighted the need to replicate studies showing successful intervention, as well as the challenge of scaling them up in policy. O’Mahony noted these same caveats and also pointed to the current lack of evidence that any of these interventions have lasting impact.
Valerie van Mulukom (opens in a new tab)a researcher from the Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University in the UK who was not involved in the review, described it as a “timely undertaking”, but stressed that t is important to view the spread of conspiracy beliefs as a social process.
“Interventions can decrease belief in certain conspiracy theories by highlighting problems in the information presented, but they do not remove underlying social causes of belief,” she said in an email. Factors such as people’s personalities, paranoias, need for closure, financial insecurities, and feelings of marginalization can all influence the plots they attribute to and the interventions that work on them.
“It’s not the case that everyone with lower levels of analytical or scientific reasoning believes in conspiracy theories,” van Mulukom noted.
As an extension of their review, O’Mahony and his colleagues are developing a video game aimed at honing players’ critical thinking skills. Such games have already proven effective in the fight against fake news (opens in a new tab).
“It may sound a bit forward-thinking, but we’re finding it’s a potentially promising avenue for teaching people to apply critical thinking skills to conspiracy theories,” he said.
