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A new study, led by ������Ƶ Junior Research Fellow Rakoen Maertens, has found that targeted psychological interventions can importantly enhance long-term resistance to misinformation. Dubbed “psychological booster shots,” these interventions improve memory retention and help individuals recognize and resist misleading information more effectively over time.

Published in Nature Communications, the study explored how different approaches, including text-based messages, videos and online games, can inoculate people against misinformation. Inoculation is a psychological intervention method that teaches people how to recognise misinformation and future deception attempts, and train people on how to dissect it to see its flaws efficiently and fast enough to prevent most of its damage. 

Five large-scale experiments were conducted by researchers from the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Potsdam and King's ������Ƶ London. Over 11,000 participants were tested using three types of misinformation-prevention method, before being exposed to misinformation and evaluated on their ability to detect and resist it over time. The studies found that inoculation effects decay quickly over time, not because people lose motivation, but because they forget what they have learned in the intervention. However, providing memory-enhancing "booster" interventions, such as a follow-up reminder or reinforcement message, can help maintain misinformation resistance for a significantly longer period. 

The study highlights the urgent need for scalable and more durable misinformation interventions and highlights the importance of collaboration between researchers, policymakers, and social media platforms to integrate these insights into public information campaigns. 

We spoke to lead researcher, Dr Rakoen Maertens, about the importance of this study in today's world of misinformation: 

In a world where diverse influences and misinformation are commonplace, why is this topic of research significant?

Europe is at war. Physically in Ukraine, but when looking at hybrid warfare and specifically active disinformation attacks, also the UK, my home country Belgium, the EU, and NATO, are being targeted by foreign states and other malign actors (incl. terrorist groups). Misinformation is taking over large and influential proportions of our information environment, destabilising our democracies and curbing free speech. As misinformation spreads like a virus, fast and continuously mutating, we need to find the most effective methods to stop its spread and attain cognitive immunity in our society. If we do not take back control of the information environment, and create an active a strongly prepared citizenry, we are going to lose this war. This research provides new insights on how to do this effectively, but also shows we have even more work to do than previously thought. 

Were there any strands in your research or findings that surprised you and your co-authors?

We realised that inoculation interventions, despite inoculation being seen by many as one of the best cognitive immunity interventions, typically lose most of their effect within weeks. Even more, the model suggests that when an intervention does not include a stage where participants have to actively apply and practice what they have learned in the intervention – which is typically the case when these interventions are introduced in the real world – the cognitive immunity can wane almost entirely in just a couple of days. That means that psychological booster shots are not only a handy tool, but in fact, could be seen as a necessity to talk about real-world intervention effectiveness. Just like for a vaccine, psychological booster shots can be used to boost people's memory strength, and therefore extend cognitive immunity to misinformation over time.

How does this paper and research progress the field of study? What are the next steps in inoculation research?

The paper introduces an integrated "memory-motivation model of inoculation", that distinguishes between the role of memory and motivation in inoculation interventions. It shows that motivation is important to learn from and be fully engaged with the intervention, but that relatively more important is the role of memory, as without a strong memory of what is learned in the inoculation intervention people may stop recognising misleading patterns in misinformation. The model was tested in text-based, video-based, and gamified inoculation interventions, reflecting the wide scope of potential inoculation avenues for implementation in the field. As a next step, this model can now be used to create new interventions with long-lasting effectiveness and more accurate predictions about the longevity of inoculation, for example by including categorisation exercises with immediate feedback within the intervention itself.

What are your personal ambitions going forward in your research?

We have to improve the way we measure the effectiveness of the interventions we create. I am currently working on a new toolkit on how to do that. On the one hand, when talking about policy makers, saying that there is a "significant effect" may not be that meaningful in practice: what real-life outcome does the intervention change, and by how much, and what does it not change? And how can we create a framework that really measures all dimensions of misinformation susceptibility, to see where each intervention scores well and where not, as well as potential side effects? In general, my main ambition is to do research that is impactful, and that can be employed in the field immediately and efficiently. Not only do I want to the research, but I want to work with the field to maximise the impact by investing in science-policy liaison work.

Read the full paper from Nature Communications