Background: In May 2020, news outlets reported misinformation about the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) related to COVID-19. Correcting misinformation about outbreaks and politics is particularly challenging. Affective belief echoes continue to influence audiences even after successful correction. Narrative and emotional flow scholarship suggest that a narrative corrective with a positive ending could reduce belief echoes. Therefore, this study investigated the efficacy of a narrative corrective with a relief ending for correcting misinformation about the CDC.
Methods: Between 29 May and 4 June 2020, we tested the effectiveness of a narrative to correct this misinformation. Participants in the United States (N = 469) were enrolled via Qualtrics panels in an online message experiment and randomized to receive a narrative corrective, a didactic corrective or no corrective.
Results: The narrative corrective resulted in lower endorsement of the misinformation compared with the control and the didactic corrective. The narrative corrective had a positive indirect effect on perceived CDC competence and mask wearing intentions for politically moderate and conservative participants via relief.
Conclusions: Public health institutions, such as the CDC, should consider utilizing narrative messaging with positive emotion endings to correct misinformation. Narratives better address affective belief echoes, particularly for counter-attitudinal audiences.
Keywords: COVID-19; misinformation; narrative; political ideology; relief.
© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Faculty of Public Health.