1 How was DIP (Detox Information Project) born?

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With the aim of improving Colombia and creating a less polarized and more resilient country against misinformation, DIP was established in mid-2021. Supported by SURA and Protección, a team comprising economists, communicators, political scientists, and psychologists embarked on the task of understanding the Colombian population and the specific traits that can make it stronger against the inevitable onslaught of misinformation in this new digital era.

 

With this understanding, the DIP team could design tools for the country that fulfill the objective of being more protected against misinformation, reducing polarization, and fostering greater empathy among the people.

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2 How did we get here?

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The first thing we wanted to do, driven by our commitment to academic rigor, was to conduct a comprehensive and thorough diagnosis of what makes Colombians more vulnerable to misinformation. To achieve this diagnosis, the first step was to carry out an extensive literature review on the various biases and cognitive phenomena that affect our decision-making. Globally, some research has hypothesized about the mechanisms that drive belief in fake news. Among these references are Jay van Bavel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at New York University, Sander van der Linden, a professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge, Gordon Pennycook, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Regina, and David Rand, a professor of management and cognitive and brain sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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In their research, these experts have developed frameworks that seek to explain the reasons why we believe in fake news. For example, Jay van Bavel has suggested that there are two potential paths to believing and sharing fake news(1). On the one hand, there is the option of "Exposure - Belief - Sharing," in which exposure to fake news increases belief in them and hence the likelihood of being shared. Secondly, he proposes that the second circumstance "belief" is not necessarily needed; therefore, the second path involves only "Exposure - Sharing." According to van Bavel, these paths are exacerbated as there are added psychological risks, including political polarization, the intertwining of emotionality and morality, a need for chaos, among others. Thus, our approach focused on identifying these psychological risks, arguing that if we can reduce these risks, we can also reduce vulnerability to misinformation. This methodology may have a greater impact as we understand that exposure to misinformation will be present in the future.

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With this idea in mind, we identified in the literature a series of psychological characteristics that could be associated with being more vulnerable to misinformation. Some of these characteristics include confirmation bias, moral disengagement, empathy and loss of empathy, digital literacy, political literacy, among others. Based on theoretical findings, our team conducted a prioritization exercise in which, based on what we had observed in the literature, we determined the most relevant characteristics related to vulnerability to misinformation. From this prioritization exercise, the characteristics we wanted to analyze in the diagnosis emerged, with the aim of understanding in greater depth how these characteristics behave and influence the minds of Colombians, making them more vulnerable to misinformation.

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1.  Van Bavel, J. J., Harris, E. A., Pärnamets, P., Rathje, S., Doell, K., & Tucker, J. A. (2020). Political psychology in the digital (mis) information age: A model of news belief and sharing.

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3 Our diagnosis

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With a sample of over a thousand Colombians from various regions of the country, we administered an instrument consisting of two parts. Firstly, participants had to complete a test called the Implicit Association Test, which involves assigning words that appear in the center of a computer screen to one of two categories displayed in the upper corners of the screen. This test aims to reveal implicit biases, ones that are not consciously aware, which can affect people's decision-making. The test has been primarily used by Project Implicit(2), a collaboration of researchers and professors interested in social cognition from various universities, including Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington.

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Secondly, participants in the diagnosis responded to a survey containing various questions related to the psychological characteristics prioritized in the previous stage of the project. An additional section added was a set of questions from a test known as the Cognitive Reflection Test. Through these questions, we sought to understand to what extent individuals follow a more reflective or intuitive process when responding – how much they rely on their initial instinct or how much they doubt that initial instinct and reconsider the first response that comes to mind.

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In addition to answering these questions, participants were also asked to rate the perceived reliability of certain news headlines presented to them. These headlines were sourced from news articles that had been reviewed by fact-checking platforms such as ColombiaCheck or El Detector de La Silla Vacía. This ensured that the news we presented was reliably either true or false. Furthermore, the news articles were categorized by the ideology they could be associated with (particularly the false news), allowing us to determine if vulnerability to fake news is related to ideology. Finally, demographic and ideological identification questions were also included.

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2. https://www.projectimplicit.net/#:~:text=Project%20Implicit%20is%20a%20non,group%2Dbased%20biases.

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4 Discoveries

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After applying the test and survey to over a thousand Colombians, the task shifted towards analyzing the data we collected. Through these analyses, we were able to establish that there are four characteristics that are strongly and statistically significantly related to vulnerability to misinformation: distrust of others, dehumanizing or stripping others of human characteristics, feeling discriminated against, and being less tolerant of ambiguity (referred to as high cognitive closure need), meaning a preference for seeing everything in black and white. In this sense, many of the reasons that can increase this vulnerability are related to how we perceive our relationships with others or, at least, what we believe others think about us. This includes dehumanization – considering other individuals or groups as less human in emotional and/or cognitive terms, perceiving that we are discriminated against – whether genuinely or believed, and distrusting others, for example, refusing to make agreements with those we consider different. Finally, intolerance of ambiguity implies a motivation to seek concrete answers, avoiding holding information that may be ambiguous or initially contradictory in the mind.

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Apart from these main findings, we also discovered that certain beliefs regarding fake news do not seem to apply, at least in the Colombian context. For example, it is a popular belief to think that education has a direct effect on how vulnerable we are to believing fake news. In that sense, those with more academic titles should have a greater ability to recognize fake news. Our findings show that this does not happen in the Colombian context, and people's ability to recognize misinformation is not directly related to having higher academic education. The same applies to age: our findings suggest that age is not directly related to being more vulnerable to fake news and misinformation.

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Finally, another relevant finding that speaks to the need to protect ourselves from misinformation is that real news also fails to generate trust. In this regard, our analyses showed that although people trusted real news a little more, they also generated mistrust. And this point is crucial, as we depend on the press and news to inform us about people's situations and our country, but it seems we are entering an era where everything is either true or false.

 

 

5 What comes next from DIP for Colombia?

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In light of these findings, the DIP team's recent months have been focused on developing tools to reduce vulnerabilities in Colombians and, in turn, mitigate the impact of misinformation and fake news in Colombia. To develop these tools, we drew inspiration from two particular authors: on one hand, the research conducted initially by Sander van der Linden and his use of the Inoculation Theory, which acts as a kind of "vaccine" developing cognitive defenses against a particular issue, in this case, misinformation. On the other hand, from research conducted by Emile Bruneau in collaboration with Andrés Casas, demonstrating the effectiveness of using audiovisual media to reduce discrimination and increase empathy(3).

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In this sense, the tools presented to Colombia on March 30, 2022, consist of four videos illustrating the four concepts identified in the diagnosis, along with short and entertaining tests showing users how these concepts influence their daily lives and interactions with others. These tools are released at a time when they are even more relevant, as the presidential elections are approaching in May of this year. In these elections, more than ever, we need everyone to go to the polls with fewer biases that might impact decision-making, i.e., less influence from those seeking to affect the democratic process through lies and half-truths.

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DIP tools do not aim to change the information we consume, as it would be an impossible task. On the contrary, echoing the concept of "inoculation theory" again, we aim for Colombians to build their own cognitive defenses against the information they are exposed to. If everyone is protected when encountering misinformation, it is much more likely that when we make decisions, we do so with information we can trust and that is not influenced by emotions that naturally arise when discussing sensitive topics that can be manipulated.

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With this, we aim to contribute to protecting our democracy and building a country where everyone is more aware and less vulnerable, fostering empathy and reducing polarization. Help us share our tools – you are essential in stopping the wave of misinformation and polarization in the country!

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3. Bruneau, Emile, Andres Casas, Boaz Hameiri, and Nour Kteily. 2022. Exposure to a Media Intervention Helps Promote Peace in Colombia. Nature Human Behaviour.

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