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Category: Project

Description: In our previous study on warnings about misinformation delivered by bait questions, we found that both general warnings and specific warnings about misleading bait evidence were generally ineffective at reducing the misinformation effect. Here, we aim to provide a replication and extension of our previous study, wherein we test whether highly specific warnings about the quantity and nature of the misleading information can mitigate the misinformation effect. Participants are randomly assigned to receive (1) a general warning that there may be misleading information in the film, (2) a specific warning that bait questions in the interview might contain misleading information, or (3) a specific warning about bait questions that includes a specific example of the questions containing misleading information and includes how many misleading items there are. Participants are also randomly assigned to (1) receive the warning before the film, (2) receive the warning after the film, or (3) receive no warning at all. We are interested in testing whether the results of our previous study will be reproduced, and we are interested in testing whether the highly specific warnings are effective. Given the strength of the warning, failure to mitigate the ME would suggest that the ME is highly robust in this context. We plan to recruit enough participants to reach a cell size of approximately n = 40 (7 cells, N = 280) after exclusions for failure to follow instructions or technical difficulties. This sample size should provide us with sufficient power to detect a small-medium effect (d = .33), with .80 power. Additionally, we will conduct a small-scale meta-analysis of this study and our previous study on misinformation warnings in order to gain a clearer picture of the robustness and size of any effects we observe.