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.