Friction Against Fiction: Adding 'Grit' to Boost Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation

Misinformation continues to spread rapidly and can have adverse effects on society. Inoculation, which involves warning people and explaining how they might be misled, is one promising psychological intervention against misinformation. Another intervention consists of friction, which is a technological measure to make sharing and finding of low-quality content slightly harder. Although friction is not uncommon, the effects on people's information consumption are largely unknown. It is also unknown how those two interventions interact. We used video-based inoculation against emotionally manipulative language in a preregistered randomized controlled study (n = 637) that examined two types of friction in a simulated video platform. One type of friction was targeted (only on the inoculation video) and another type was broad-spectrum (i.e., it affected the whole viewing session). We found that the inoculation video is effective in increasing discernment of technique recognition as well as confidence and can be boosted further by targeted friction, whereas broad-spectrum friction can have adverse effects, especially on remembering and enjoying the content. We show that introducing targeted friction in the form of single unskippable videos on online platforms can enhance the effects of inoculation at scale.