Vaccination against the “infodemic”

How can we stay alert when faced with ques­tion­able inform­a­tion in a time of crisis? What atti­tude can we adopt to con­tend with unfoun­ded con­spir­acy the­or­ies and para­noid rants?

Free­dom of inform­a­tion, a dis­tinct­ive fea­ture of demo­cracy, is also one of its greatest weak­nesses because of the inher­ent psy­cho­lo­gic­al capa­city for each of us to be naïve or gull­ible. Indeed, our brain is sub­ject to men­tal short­cuts that we too often attrib­ute to oth­ers rather than ourselves.

Cog­nit­ive biases, pre­ju­dice, ste­reo­types and false memor­ies insi­di­ously affect our per­cep­tion and judge­ment. We delight in the sen­sa­tion­al, rap­id sat­is­fac­tion, simple or even simplist­ic reas­on­ing, but also con­sensus-based explan­a­tions and dicho­tom­ous think­ing, as in the case of the fam­ous false dilemma: “either you are with us, or against us”.

Intent on decid­ing and act­ing imme­di­ately in the present, these psy­cho­lo­gic­al mech­an­isms reveal what the eco­nom­ist and Nobel prize win­ner Richard Thaler calls the “doer” self ¹. The oppos­ite is the “plan­ner” self, mean­ing the cog­nit­ive pro­cesses which require more effort; the require time, mod­esty, and per­spect­ive as well as the tools to observe and com­pare facts. Man­aging this “doer-plan­ner” con­flict is at the heart of our free will. Espe­cially giv­en that, in times of crisis, uncer­tainty about the future and an “infodem­ic” envir­on­ment, strongly enhance pre-exist­ing prejudice.

Beat­ing con­spir­acy theories

The fight against con­spir­acy the­or­ies is a major sub­ject of con­tem­por­ary research, which is reflec­ted in the work on inhib­i­tion led in France by Olivi­er Houdé ². Inhib­i­tion is a pro­cess of attent­ive con­trol and cog­nit­ive res­ist­ance that blocks heur­ist­ics, ques­tion­able intu­itions and rigid pre­ju­dices, so that they can be chal­lenged by the mind. 

This pro­cess can be trained and enhanced. But it remains dif­fi­cult because, for the “doer”, fake news and con­spir­acy the­or­ies are tasty morsels that carry con­vin­cing rhet­or­ic sup­por­ted by “per­suas­ive lub­ric­ants” such as author­ity fig­ures, illu­sions of cor­rel­a­tion, generalisations…the list is long. Every­one tries to con­vince them­selves that they are more or less aware of this under­ly­ing con­flict and their abil­ity to mas­ter it.

Some of these cog­nit­ive biases are even also there to give us the feel­ing that we are not at the mercy of these pit­falls! This is the case for the over­con­fid­ence effect – a bias which explains why more than half of the pop­u­la­tion believe they are smarter than aver­age, that 93% of drivers con­sider them­selves bet­ter than oth­er motor­ists ³, and that 94% of uni­ver­sity lec­tur­ers believe that they are more com­pet­ent than their col­leagues ⁴!

What about you? Don’t you throw the dice more gently when you want a small num­ber and more ener­get­ic­ally when you want a large one?! The illu­sion of con­trol coaxes us into think­ing that we pos­sess a reas­sur­ing power, includ­ing in the face of uncertainty.

Cul­tur­al truisms

But anoth­er, less obvi­ous, prob­lem explains the power of fake news and con­spir­acy the­or­ies; “cul­tur­al tru­isms” and the defi­cit in demo­cracy they are asso­ci­ated with. A cul­tur­al tru­ism is a cul­tur­al rep­res­ent­a­tion, acquired through edu­ca­tion, which serves as a com­mon ground and is widely shared between the mem­bers of a com­munity. As such, it is rarely debated or chal­lenged – hence its weak­ness. Some examples include non-con­tro­ver­sial val­ues (hon­esty, equal­ity, equity), or prin­ciples con­sidered to be obvi­ous in some soci­et­ies (sec­u­lar­ism or the uni­ver­sal­ity of human rights). 

Since tru­isms are self-evid­ent, we are not aware of the reas­ons for which we adhere to these val­ues, and we are not trained to defend them when they are chal­lenged. Let us con­sider the teach­ers who had to explain and jus­ti­fy free­dom of speech to their class in the wake of Samuel Paty’s murder in Con­flans-Sainte-Hon­or­ine (France).

Con­tem­por­ary tru­isms are often tar­geted by con­spir­acy the­or­ies. For example, they present sci­ence as a nar­rat­ive very sim­il­ar to oth­ers (Etienne Klein explains this prob­lem per­fectly in his latest short work, Le goût du vrai, 2020 ⁵). Thus, the tru­ism accord­ing to which “sci­entif­ic know­ledge seeks truth and works for the good of human­kind” is com­pletely under­mined, as are the bene­fits of vac­cin­a­tion, or glob­al warm­ing linked to human activity.

Fake news: shortcuts 

Since scep­ti­cism is born from a lack of herd immunity against con­spir­acy the­or­ies, how then can we stim­u­late the immune sys­tem of our social fab­ric? Firstly, through effi­cient pop­ular­isa­tion of the ideas tar­geted by con­spir­acy the­or­ies. For example, by explain­ing how sci­ence works and the fun­da­ment­al basis of free speech and sec­u­lar­ism. But this can also be achieved by under­stand­ing our own indi­vidu­al and col­lect­ive naiv­ety in the face of fake news and con­spir­acy the­or­ies. A mech­an­ism that can help us inhib­it our “doer self”.

Being aware of these biases does not seem to be enough though, we must improve our skills and our abil­ity to present effect­ive coun­ter­ar­gu­ments to con­front fake news and con­spir­acy the­or­ies. This ques­tion of the defence of tru­isms is not new, but it resur­faces in the light of cur­rent events. It was form­al­ised by the psy­cho­lo­gist Wil­li­am McGuire in his “inocu­la­tion the­ory”, which has been mak­ing a comeback in sci­entif­ic pub­lic­a­tions over the past three years. Ana­log­ous to bio­lo­gic­al inocu­la­tion, the pur­pose of psy­cho­lo­gic­al inocu­la­tion is to help indi­vidu­als cre­ate their own defences, using “psy­cho­lo­gic­al anti­bod­ies” to res­ist per­suas­ive extern­al attacks.

As with medi­cine, the social fab­ric of demo­cracy needs immunity to res­ist the infodem­ic – espe­cially if it is weakened by a crisis. 

The solu­tion: a vaccine 

The psy­cho­lo­gic­al inocu­la­tion pro­cess con­sists of a reverse train­ing prac­tice: to under­stand how to wield con­spir­acy the­or­ies and fal­la­cious argu­ments, call­ing tru­isms into ques­tion in order to unravel their mech­an­isms and skil­fully decon­struct them. Train­ing to chal­lenge evid­ence is not an easy task, because it must first pass by a respect for the very strategies that we are try­ing to over­come, so that we can mas­ter them later on. It is how­ever a very prom­ising approach in con­tem­por­ary research.

An inocu­la­tion work­shop is usu­ally divided into three ses­sions: a defence phase, an attack phase, and finally a rebut­tal phase. The defence phase con­sists of provid­ing or pro­du­cing argu­ments in favour of the idea we wish to defend (for example, free­dom of speech). In the attack phase, par­ti­cipants will listen or hon­estly and sin­cerely devel­op oppos­ing argu­ments to this idea, but also use com­mon con­spir­acy the­ory tricks. In our example, free­dom of speech is chal­lenged. In oth­er words, par­ti­cipants behave as con­spir­acy the­or­ists or antagonists. 

Finally, the rebut­tal phase of the inocu­la­tion pro­tocol con­sists in present­ing coun­ter­ar­gu­ments to train and stim­u­late psy­cho­lo­gic­al defences. Par­ti­cip­at­ing in these work­shops in small groups leads to “social inocu­la­tion”, where par­ti­cipants also learn from one another.

Today, tri­als based on “demo­cracy work­shops” or “fake news games” allow mem­bers to carry out sim­u­la­tions and learn to play the roles of con­spir­acy the­or­ists. Research­ers like Jon Roozen­beek in Cam­bridge show how much this type of ped­agogy helps to reduce the per­suas­ive power of fake news art­icles, to put con­spir­acy the­or­ies into per­spect­ive and sharpen the defence of the val­ues we hold dear ⁶. Demo­cracy should not be taken for gran­ted: our soci­et­ies need to devel­op and train the skills of their cit­izens more than ever if they want to be the archi­tects of their future.