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Key points
- Misinformation is false, inaccurate, or misleading information.
- Fighting misinformation requires recognizing it, locating sources, and identifying the motives of the sources.
- Misinformation can be stopped by correcting errors, psychological change, and social change.
Misinformation is a contemporary scourge evident in disputes about climate change, vaccinations, wars, inequality, and political controversies. Eight techniques can help you transform misinformation into real information by asking incisive questions.
1. What Misinformation Can Be Identified?
Repairing misinformation requires first identifying it, just as curing a patient requires first identifying their disease. Misinformation jumps out at us when we encounter a claim that contradicts something we already believe. When we hear a claim that contradicts our beliefs, we should not immediately assume that the claim is misinformation, for our previous beliefs may be erroneous. Rather, the incompatible utterance should prompt us to reconsider our beliefs and figure out whether the new claim is more coherent with the overall evidence than our old views. Then identifying the claim as misinformation results from evaluating it on the basis of all the relevant evidence.
Another way to spot possible misinformation is to notice whether a claim is backed with any evidence. Scientists are expected to indicate evidence that supports their hypotheses, and politicians sometimes spell out the evidential bases for their proposals. A strong claim that is merely stated as a pronouncement without any associated evidence should raise suspicions of being misinformation.
A third way to detect misinformation is to recognize a claim as coming from a source that is known to be both biased and unreliable. Some sources of information are so frequently wrong that we can quickly discount what they say.
2. What Are the Sources of Misinformation?
When a source of information is unfamiliar, it requires further investigation. My sources are mostly media with which I have years of experience that has generated confidence in their general, although not perfect, accuracy: CNN, CBC, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, and The Economist. However, I also encounter websites that are new to me and therefore require more careful scrutiny. Unavoidably, the assessment of new sources of information depends on considering how well they cohere with already trusted sources.
3. What Are the Motives of the Originators and Believers of Misinformation?
Motivated reasoning is a major factor in the generation and propagation of misinformation. Accordingly, the project of turning misinformation into real information requires identifying the motives of both the originators and recipients of falsehoods. Recognizing the goals of producers of misinformation helps with the identification of lies, while recognizing the motives of recipients should help with the process of correcting their mistakes, either directly or by critical thinking and motivational interviewing.
4. What Items of Misinformation Are Subject to Factual Correction?
My first three questions about identifying misinformation, sources, and motives are preparation for the core operations of correcting information by factual correction, critical thinking, and motivational interviewing. Factual correction is the most straightforward and can work for misinformation that is easily shown to be false.
5. How Can Critical Thinking Be Used to Identify Thinking Errors and Correct Them?
Critical thinking is the two-step process of noticing misinformation as resulting from thinking errors (biases and fallacies), and then correcting the misinformation by applying legitimate procedures, such as careful causal reasoning.
The best antidote to motivated reasoning is the judicious use of evidence in a broad range of good reasoning methods, including statistical inference and inference to the best explanation. Another tool of critical thinking is the evaluation of analogies as strong, weak, bogus, or toxic.
6. How Can Motivational Interviewing Be Used to Change Attitudes and Behaviors Based on Misinformation?
In contrast to the logic-based approach of critical thinking, motivational interviewing operates more like psychotherapy in using conversation and empathy to change attitudes as much as beliefs. Motivated reasoning can be corrected by substituting evidence-based reasoning, but it can also be modified by shifting a person toward different motives. Motivational interviewing for alcoholics can help them to value health, work, and family over excessive drinking that is threatening these values.
7. How Can Institutions Be Modified to Reduce Misinformation?
The spread of misinformation often depends on social institutions, such as irresponsible media and governments. Institutional modification can contribute to reduction of misinformation by creating better institutions, eliminating evil institutions, changing membership, altering explicit policies, and changing implicit values, norms, and practices.
8. What Political Actions Can Be Used to Mitigate Misinformation?
In dealing with misinformation, stages are reached where no amount of factual correction, critical thinking, and motivational interviewing can suffice to bring about needed change. Then political actions such as government regulation, electoral change, and lobbying become the most effective ways of dealing with fundamental problems. Political action could also work to reduce people’s feelings of powerlessness that make them more susceptible to misinformation.
References
Thagard, P. (2024). Falsehoods Fly: Why Misinformation Spreads and How to Stop It. New York: Columbia University Press.
