Fears around misinformation reached new heights in 2022 as digital propaganda was a central theme of the war in Ukraine. Research from the University of Texas at Austin set out to explore how misinformation could be combatted.

They found that something as simple as asking “How do I know this is true?” is often sufficient to break through and challenge any biases we may have.

“We’re all at risk of believing misinformation,” the researchers explain. “When we ask people these so-called self-referential questions, it helps them think more critically, not only about the headlines they see but also subsequent headlines.”

When we don’t ask such a question, we’re far more inclined to only accept articles that conform to our pre-existing beliefs. The findings emerged after volunteers were asked to rate headlines that were randomly assigned to them according to both their believability and their truthfulness. They were then asked to rate their personal knowledge of each story by being asked that simple question.

Personal knowledge

Each participant was given a number of options to choose from when rating their personal knowledge of the story. These included:

• I have personal knowledge of this story and it’s true
• I have personal knowledge and it’s false
• I have no personal knowledge, but it seems true
• I have no personal knowledge, but it seems false
• I cannot tell whether it’s true or false

Interestingly, as they were going through this process, the volunteers also wore an EEG headset so that any changes in their neurophysiology could be tracked as they assessed each headline. This revealed that when we assess articles that force us to question our own knowledge, there is activity in parts of the brain linked with deliberate cognitive activity.

For instance, many of the volunteers realized that their knowledge on the topic covered by the story was insufficient to accurately gauge its credibility, which was sufficient to jolt them out of automatically assuming it to be true (or false) depending on their pre-existing beliefs.

What’s more, this effect appears to linger, with the volunteers found to be more critical of articles even when they were no longer prompted to do so by the self-referential question. The researchers believe social media companies could prompt users with similar questions in a relatively straightforward attempt to reduce the spread of misinformation.