Detecting political misinformation: A boosting intervention tested on Donald Trump’s statements

Misinformation has become an unavoidable part of political reality, eroding institutionaltrust. We tested whether a simple booster intervention can improve misinformation detectioncompared to intuitive judgments. The booster conditions instructed people to focus on thelevel of detail in a politician's message while allowing them to weigh in factual knowledge.Americans (n = 588) judged the veracity of statements made by Donald Trump, which werefact-checked as true or false. False statements were judged less detailed than true statements,and the booster interventions increased misinformation-detection accuracy by 4 to 6percentage points over intuitive judgments. Political statements as short as one sentencediffered in detail depending on whether they were true or false, and this could be used toboost voters’ ability to detect misinformation, at least in Donald Trump’s statements.