Psychological inoculation can reduce susceptibility to misinformation in large rational agent networks

Toby D Pilditch; Jon Roozenbeek; Jens Koed Madsen; Sander van der Linden

doi:10.1098/rsos.211953

Psychological inoculation can reduce susceptibility to misinformation in large rational agent networks

R Soc Open Sci. 2022 Aug 10;9(8):211953. doi: 10.1098/rsos.211953. eCollection 2022 Aug.

Authors

Toby D Pilditch^{1

2}, Jon Roozenbeek³, Jens Koed Madsen⁴, Sander van der Linden³

Affiliations

¹ School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK.
² Department of Psychology and Language Studies, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
³ Cambridge Social Decision-Making Laboratory, Department of Psychology, School of Biology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3RQ, UK.
⁴ Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, London School of Economics, Kings Way, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.

Abstract

The unchecked spread of misinformation is recognized as an increasing threat to public, scientific and democratic health. Online networks are a contributing cause of this spread, with echo chambers and polarization indicative of the interplay between the search behaviours of users and reinforcement processes within the system they inhabit. Recent empirical work has focused on interventions aimed at inoculating people against misinformation, yielding success on the individual level. However, given the evolving, dynamic information context of online networks, important questions remain regarding how such inoculation interventions interact with network systems. Here we use an agent-based model of a social network populated with belief-updating users. We find that although equally rational agents may be assisted by inoculation interventions to reject misinformation, even among such agents, intervention efficacy is temporally sensitive. We find that as beliefs disseminate, users form self-reinforcing echo chambers, leading to belief consolidation-irrespective of their veracity. Interrupting this process requires 'front-loading' of inoculation interventions by targeting critical thresholds of network users before consolidation occurs. We further demonstrate the value of harnessing tipping point dynamics for herd immunity effects, and note that inoculation processes do not necessarily lead to increased rates of 'false-positive' rejections of truthful communications.

Keywords: belief updating; complex systems; inoculation theory; misinformation.