Is the COVID-19 bad news game good news? Testing whether creating and disseminating fake news about vaccines in a computer game reduces people's belief in anti-vaccine arguments.

Autor: Rędzio AM; Department of Psychology Warsaw, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Electronic address: aredzio@swps.edu.pl., Izydorczak K; Department of Psychology Wrocław, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Electronic address: kizydorczak@swps.edu.pl., Muniak P; Department of Psychology Warsaw, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Electronic address: pmuniak@swps.edu.pl., Kulesza W; Department of Psychology Warsaw, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Electronic address: wkulesza@swps.edu.pl., Doliński D; Department of Psychology Wrocław, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Poland. Electronic address: ddolinsk@swps.edu.pl.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Acta psychologica [Acta Psychol (Amst)] 2023 Jun; Vol. 236, pp. 103930. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 May 01.
DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2023.103930
Abstrakt: Improving vaccination eagerness is crucial, especially during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and establishing new procedures to achieve that goal is highly important. Previous research (Roozenbeek & van der Linden, 2019a, 2019b) has indicated that playing the "Bad News" game, in which a player spreads fake news to gain followers, reduces people's belief in fake news. The goal of the present paper was to test an analogous new game called "COVID-19 Bad News (CBN)" to improve one's eagerness to vaccinate against coronavirus. CBN was constructed to examine whether creating and disseminating fake news focused on vaccinations and the COVID-19 pandemic has a similar effect and improves people's attitudes toward vaccination. Two experiments were conducted where participants played CBN or Tetris and afterwards evaluated the credibility of statements about vaccines against COVID-19 and finally filled out a questionnaire concerning their attitudes toward vaccination. The results show that playing CBN does not reduce evaluations of the credibility of all statements that are unfavorable to vaccines (false as well as true). Additionally, it does not enhance readiness to vaccinate. Future research and limitations are discussed.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare no conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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