1 How was DIP (Detox Information Project) or Project to Detoxify Information born?

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With the aim of improving Colombia and having a country that is less polarized and more protected against disinformation, DIP was born in mid-2021. With the support of SURA and Protección, a team made up of economists, communicators, political scientists, and psychologists, embarked on the task of understanding the Colombian population and the particular traits that can make it stronger against the disinformation attacks that are inevitable in this new digital age. 

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Having this understanding, the DIP team would have the possibility of designing tools to deliver to the country that meet the objective of being more protected against disinformation, reducing polarization and being more empathic with each other.

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2 How did we get here?

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The first thing we wanted to do, also because we have always had academic rigor as the engine of our actions, was a complete and judicious diagnosis of what makes a Colombian man or woman more vulnerable to misinformation. In order to make this diagnosis, the first step was to carry out an extensive review of the literature on the multiple and diverse biases and cognitive phenomena that affect our decision-making. Worldwide, some research has been carried out that has raised hypotheses about what mechanisms motivate belief in fake news. Among these references is Jay van Bavel, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of New York, Sander van der Linden, professor of social psychology at the University of Cambridge, Gordon Pennycook, professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Regina and David Rand, professor of management and brain and cognitive sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

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In their investigations, these experts have generated schemes that seek to explain the reasons why we believe fake news. For example, Jay van Bavel has argued that there are two potential ways to believe and share fake news(1). On the one hand, there is the “Exposure – Belief – Share” option, in which exposure to fake news increases belief in it and therefore the probability of being shared. Secondly, it states 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 to the extent that there are added psychological risks, among which are political polarization, the mixture of emotionality and morality, the need for chaos, among others. Thus, our approach was based on looking for these psychological risks, under the argument that, if we can reduce these risks, we can also reduce vulnerability to misinformation. This methodology can have a greater impact to the extent that we understand that exposure to disinformation 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 disinformation. 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 carried out 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 came the characteristics that we wanted to analyze in the diagnosis, with the aim of understanding in greater depth how these characteristics behave and influence the minds of Colombians and make them more vulnerable to misinformation.

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1.  Van Bavel, JJ, Harris, EA, Pärnamets, P., Rathje, S., Doell, K., & Tucker, JA (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 more than a thousand Colombians from various regions of the country, we applied an instrument that consisted of two parts. On the one hand, the participants had to answer a test called the Implicit Association Test, which consists of assigning, on a computer screen, words that appear in the center of the screen in one of the two categories that appear in the upper corners. from the screen. This test seeks to discover implicit biases, that is, biases that are not conscious, and that can affect people's decision-making. This test has been used, above all, by Project Implicit(2), a union 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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Second, the diagnostic participants answered a survey that contained different questions that were related to the psychological characteristics that we prioritized in the previous stage of the project. An additional section that was added was a section that contained questions from a test known as the Cognitive Reflection Test. Through these questions, we seek to understand how much people follow a more reflective or intuitive process when responding, that is, how much do they go with their first instinct or how much do they doubt that first instinct and reconsider the first answer that comes to them? the mind.

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In addition to asking them to answer these questions, we also asked them to tell us how trustworthy they found some of the news headlines we presented to them. Those headlines were taken from news that had been reviewed by fake news identification portals such as ColombiaCheck or El Detector de La Silla Vacía. With that we ensured that the news we were presenting was reliably false or reliably true. Likewise, the news was divided into the ideology with which it could be identified (particularly fake news), with the aim of being able to determine if the vulnerability to fake news is related to ideology. Finally, demographic and identification questions with ideological borders 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 Our findings 

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After applying the test and the survey to more than a thousand Colombians, the task turned to the analysis of the data we collected. Through these analyzes we were able to establish that there are 4 characteristics that are more strongly and statistically significantly related to vulnerability to disinformation: mistrusting the other, removing or subtracting human characteristics from the other, feeling discriminated against and being less tolerant of ambiguity. (called a high need for cognitive closure), that is, preferring to see everything in black and white. In that sense, several of the reasons that can increase this vulnerability have to do with how we see our relationships with others or, at least, what we think others think about us. This is the case of dehumanization – considering other people or other groups of people as less human in emotional and/or cognitive terms -, perceiving that we are discriminated against – either because we genuinely are or because we believe we are – and mistrusting the other, 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 found that beliefs about fake news do not seem to apply, at least in the Colombian context. For example, it is a popular belief that education has a direct effect on how vulnerable we are to believing fake news. In that sense, those who have completed a greater number of academic degrees should have a greater ability to recognize fake news. Our findings show that this is not the case in the Colombian context, and people's ability to recognize misinformation is not related to higher academic education. The same happens with age: our findings suggest that this data is not directly related to being more vulnerable to fake news and disinformation. 

Finally, another of the relevant findings that speaks to the need to protect ourselves against disinformation is that real news also fails to generate trust. In that sense, our analyzes showed that, although people trusted the real news a little more, it also generated mistrust. And this point is crucial, in that we need the press and the news to find out about the situations of the people and our country, but we seem to be entering an era where everything or nothing is true.

 

 

5 What comes from DIP for Colombia?

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Based on these findings, the DIP team's recent months of work have consisted of developing tools that reduce these vulnerabilities in Colombians, and thus reduce the impact of disinformation and false news in Colombia. To develop these tools we are inspired by two authors in particular: on the one hand, by the research initially carried out by Sander van der Linden and his use of the inoculation theory, which consists of a kind of "vaccine" and therefore develops cognitive defenses against a particular topic, in this case, disinformation. On the other, from research carried out by Emile Bruneau in the company of Andrés Casas, who demonstrated the effectiveness in the use of audiovisual media to reduce discrimination and increase levels of empathy(3).

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In this sense, the tools that we deliver to Colombia on March 30, 2022 consist of 4 videos that show what the four concepts that we found in the diagnosis look like, as well as some short and fun tests that show users how those These concepts influence their daily life and their relationship with others. The tools come to light at a time when they are even more relevant, as the presidential election approaches in May this year. In these elections, more than ever, we need all of us to go to the polls with less bias affecting us at the time of decision, that is, less influence from those who seek to affect the democratic process through lies and half-truths.

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DIP tools do not seek to change the information we consume, as it would be an impossible task. On the contrary, and resorting again to the concept of "inoculation theory", we seek that Colombians build their own cognitive defenses against the information to which they are exposed. If we are all protected at the moment we come into contact with disinformation, it is much more likely that when we make decisions we will do so with information that we can trust and that is not mediated by the emotions that organically arise when we talk about sensitive issues and that can be manipulated.

 

With this, we want to contribute to protect our democracy and build a country where we are all more aware and less vulnerable, and in this way we relate to each other with more empathy and less polarization. Help us share our tools,You are essential for us to stop the wave of disinformation and polarization in the country!

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 Bruneau, Emile, Andres Casas, Boaz Hameiri, andNour Kteily. 2022. Exposure to a Media Intervention Helps Promote Peace in Colombia. Nature Human Behavior