Psychological inoculation against fake news

This chapter explores several proposed solutions to the problem of online misinformation, commonly referred to as “fake news”. We identify four categories of such solutions: algorithmic, legislative, corrective, and psychological. We explore the latter category in detail. Specifically, we investigate the possibility of inoculation against misinformation by preemptively exposing individuals to weakened examples of common strategies used in the production of fake news. We outline our program of research and revisit three of our studies testing the cognitive “inoculation” approach, including two game-based interventions. We provide empirical evidence that serious games can be leveraged as a novel psychological intervention to combat fake news across the political spectrum. Theoretical and practical implications for inoculation theory and research on fake news are discussed.