Misinformation interventions affect discernment and trust study

Interventions designed to protect people from misinformation may produce two opposing consequences. On the one hand, emphasizing how widespread misinformation is may foster indiscriminate skepticism, undermining people’s ability to distinguish true from false claims. On the other hand, such interventions may heighten the perceived threat of misinformation, motivating more vigilant evaluation of information. This tension may be especially consequential in science-related information environments, where judgments about claim veracity are closely tied to trust in scientific authority. To address this issue, the present study experimentally compares different misinformation intervention framings and examining the psychological mechanisms through which they influence both information discernment and trust in scientists. Specifically, we test whether exposure to threat-focused and efficacy-focused inoculation messages influences individuals' ability to distinguish between true and false news as well as their trust in scientific sources, and whether these effects operate through changes in perceived prevalence of misinformation and perceived threat of misinformation. By examining these mechanisms simultaneously across two theoretically distinct outcomes, this study sheds light on the complex psychological processes through which misinformation interventions shape individuals' broader information judgments and epistemic orientations.