The Backfire Effect, or Why It Is So Hard to Combat Disinformation

To effectively debunk disinformation, you need to know why it persists

In the wake of the 2020 general election, there has been an ongoing conversation about disinformation and how best to combat it. The answer to the question seems simple — when you see disinformation simply correct it with factual info and the issue will resolve itself once enough people see that info. Surely people would appreciate being informed of their mistake and welcome the correction, right?

Anyone who has spent any time attempting to combat disinformation is having a sad chuckle right now.

Attempts to understand why debunking disinformation isn’t an easy task focus on concepts like confirmation bias and the Dunning-Kruger effect but I want to focus on a lesser-discussed concept, the backfire effect.

The backfire effect is a nasty form of confirmation bias; when presented with information that challenges a person’s original beliefs, not only does the information not persuade the person but causes that person to entrench further into their original belief. Thus the factual information “backfired” by causing the person to harden their belief in the disinformation they were previously exposed to.

There have been a few studies that make the case for the backfire effect being real, the most famous being by Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler. In their study, the two researchers presented the participants with false news stories about the US finding WMDs in Iraq, stem cell research, and tax reform, after which they gave the participants news stories with the correct information. The choice of which story each participant believed fell along ideological lines as expected, what was not expected is that those who believed the false stories to be true did not change their opinion when presented with the true stories but felt even more certain that the false stories were true.

Another interesting example of the backfire effect comes from a study conducted by David P. Redlawsk for the University of Chicago. In his study, he finds that introducing negative information on a political candidate can actually increase support for that candidate among his or her supporters (that might go a long way to explaining the popularity of Donald Trump).

When you mix the backfire effect with the idea that one’s politics is an integral part of their personality, the effect of being given information that contradicts one’s original beliefs can get ugly. Chris Stirewalt, who recently lost his job as a politics editor at Fox News over his early call that Biden won Arizona in the presidential election, sums up this reaction in his op-ed for the LA Times

“Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally.”

Anyone who has tried to correct disinformation on the internet knows this phenomenon firsthand; you are not treated as a friendly person trying to help but as an enemy trying to destroy a fundamental part of that person’s identity. Plus, nobody likes to admit they were tricked into believing disinformation and the human mind has developed excellent coping mechanisms to keep us from having to deal with that reality.

There is no absolute agreement that the backfire effect exists; there have been a few studies that question its existence and severity. In observing the vast laboratory experiment that is social media, however, it’s hard to deny the reality of the concept. Efforts to combat disinformation about election fraud and conspiracies such as QAnon have only served to reinforce belief in those who bought into the disinformation and ossify opposition to anyone who is seeking to correct them.

In the current conversation surrounding disinformation much is made of how the information is spread, but little attention is paid to the issue of why it spreads. The fashionable idea of cracking down on social media sites to pressure them into removing disinformation will only serve to sweep the issue under the rug, not eliminate it. There will always be a platform willing to host disinformation and there will always be people looking for a place to get their confirmation bias fix. To truly combat disinformation the reasons behind why it exists and spreads have to be discussed and effective solutions need to be found.

Originally published at https://jenmonroe.substack.com.