PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — After an election season rife with disinformation, Thanksgiving dinner with relatives could get interesting. A new study from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at University of Pennsylvania tells us how to best navigate these moments.
The Annenberg Center is the founder of FactCheck.org, so it certainly does believe in directly confronting false information. But research Associate Javier Granados Samayoa says the study he co-authored found that bypassing misinformation can be more effective.
“Instead of taking the misinformation head on and saying, ‘no, that’s false,’ you instead provide alternative information that has the opposite evaluative implication, which means if the misinformation was negative, you would say something positive,” Samayoa said.
Their experiments tried both correcting and bypassing misinformation about chemicals, nutritional supplements and home goods. They found in certain situations bypassing was more effective in getting people to change their minds. Samayoa says confrontation creates greater psychological discomfort.
“If you tell somebody, ‘no, you’re wrong,’ that doesn’t always go well.”
The technique relies on having facts handy that introduce a new but not mutually exclusive belief about a topic that can open a misinformed person to new information — something to think about and maybe practice as you pass the gravy boat.