Myth vs Fact framing doesn't work
On Familiarity Bias
Google an issue you care about and add “myth vs. fact” to the search terms (e.g., climate change myth vs. fact, charter schools myth vs. fact, criminal justice myth vs. fact).
The results will be full of good organizations using their websites to counter myths about their core issues. You’ll see each myth in big, bold letters. They will be succinct, straightforward, and pack a punch. Then, you’ll find a few sentences in regular text describing why that myth is false.
It’s rational to want to correct misinformation and sound strategy to establish the fact base around your issue or cause. But a lot of the ways we try to do it either don’t work or actually backfire.
Research shows that framing information as myth vs fact can reinforce the myth itself. Sharing myths on your website, in a newsletter, op-ed, or on social media makes it easier for people to believe the false claim and increases the likelihood that the myth will feel true when encountered again later.
How Warnings about False Claims Become Recommendations found that while people could initially distinguish between true and false health-related statements, after a few days, they were more likely to believe any statement they had seen, regardless of its original presentation as true or false.
The study, “Myths and facts” campaigns are at best ineffective and may increase mental illness stigma, tested a social media myth vs fact campaign. As the study title makes clear, they found the campaign to be, at best, unhelpful and, at worst, counterproductive toward decreasing the stigma associated with mental health.
Why does this happen? Cognitive science suggests people will be more likely to believe a claim if they have seen it before. Even if they initially thought it was false. Even if it goes against their own beliefs.
This is familiarity bias, and it happens no matter how deeply you think about the claim or how smart you are. We’re just not very good at remembering where our familiarity comes from, especially as time goes on.
So, the big lesson here is that if you want to promote the truth, don’t put the lies in bold all over your website.