Misinformation
(A2026-132875)

AUTHORS

Andrea Bublitz, University of Basel; Anne-Sophie Chaxel, HEC Paris; Yongkun Liu, Bocconi University; Jana Möller-Herm, Berlin University of the Arts

ABSTRACT

Misinformation has become one of the highest-ranking risks today posing threats to consumers, businesses, and governments. In response, researchers across disciplines intensively analyze news consumption, developing interventions to reduce misinformation sharing and mitigate misinformation beliefs. However, since the technological capabilities to produce synthetic content expand fast and trust in institutions deteriorates quickly, it remains a challenge to match the pace of the development. This session highlights recent consumer research that fosters a better understanding of what drives misinformation beliefs and its consequences for marketers in tackling the threat of misinformation. The project “Sharing-is-believing” in a digital context by Andrea Bublitz, Eli Sugerman, Gergely Nyilasy, and Gita Johar draws from “saying-is-believing” in face-to-face communication (Higgins & Rholes, 1978) to explain how online information sharing inflates truth judgments post-sharing. The effect is demonstrated across four studies, uncovering that it occurs (i) only when the sharer has agency in sharing, (ii) regardless of the sharer’s accountability, (iii) even if sharing is merely intended, (iv) but only if the sharer intends to share truthful content. The project Reducing Bias in Judgment by Yvan Norotte, Anne-Sophie Chaxel, and Sandra Laporte shows that confirmatory information processing – in line with pre-existing beliefs – is driven by rejection of counter-attitudinal information rather than more favorable processing of pro-attitudinal information. Four studies demonstrate the effect and show how acts of receptiveness can reduce this bias and promote more balanced truth judgments. The project Hearing Is Believing by Yongkun Liu, Kurt Munz, and Chiara Longoni explores the effects of increasingly popular text-to-speech technologies on news consumption and truth judgments. Five experiments demonstrate how people evaluate spoken news as more truthful than written news. Supporting that the effect is driven by listening fluency, the effect weakens or reverses when background noise or news format disrupt fluency. The project When Brands Retain Emotional Damage After Debunking False Information by C. Miguel Brendl, Jana Möller-Herm, Steven Sweldens, Reem Refai, Vincent Nijs, and Eva Walter investigates how firm responses should account for emotional reactions to brand-related misinformation when designing effective debunking initiatives. Building on appraisal theories of emotion (Clore et al., 1994), the authors identify specific counter-emotions to effectively counter negative consumer reactions. In sum, this session presents convincing empirical results that demonstrate how consumer research can significantly contribute to a better understanding of misinformation and help develop interventions to counteract misinformation.