COGNITIVE INOCULATION AGAINST MISINFORMATION: A NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL INTERVENTION FRAMEWORK

Abstract

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Misinformation in the modern digital era goes viral easily and has a severe consequence on the opinion of people, social divisions, and the decision-making process. The spread of fake news is a grave issue because it may influence the ideas and actions both directly and indirectly. In order to fight this, a psychological intervention, cognitive inoculation, meant to develop resistance to misinformation, has been regarded as an effective approach. This research is an outcome of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in which 200 participants will be used to evaluate the functionality of cognitive inoculation in alleviating belief in fake news. The participants were taken to the scanner of the fMRI attributes to both pre- and post-inoculation intervention wherein the brain activity of resisting misinformation could be observed. The results indicate that there was a significant post-inoculation training 41% decline in the belief in fake news. Besides, the research found that there were considerable shifts in the activation patterns of the prefrontal cortex which are associated with higher order cognitive processes like reasoning and decision making. Such brain changes indicate that cognitive inoculation does not only produce changes in the way that individuals process information but it can also affect the brain processes underlying the resistance to misinformation. The research is the first neurobiological indication of the cognitive inoculation applicability as there is evidence of psychological strategies to fight misinformation at both cognitive and neural levels.