Repeated exposure to lies online may influence the beliefs of professional content moderators, with consequences for online platforms. Hundreds of thousands of content moderators, typically based in non-Western countries, identify and weed out problematic and false content on social platforms. However, constant exposure to misinformation could convince some content moderators that false claims are true, in what is known as the “illusory truth effect.” Hause Lin and colleagues assessed the extent of this effect among professional content moderators in India and the Philippines and explored whether encouraging an accuracy mindset reduces the effect. The authors asked 199 content moderators to rate 16 COVID-19 news headlines, first on their interestingness and then, after a break, on their accuracy—along with 32 new COVID-19 news headlines. As predicted by the illusory truth effect, headlines seen for the second time were 7.1% more likely to be judged as accurate than non-repeated headlines. However, in a similar experiment in which content moderators were asked to rate accuracy first—thereby encouraging an accuracy mindset—repeated headlines were not rated as more accurate than new headlines. Similar experiments with members of the public in India and the Philippines found similar effects. According to the authors, the results suggest that the illusory truth effect is not idiosyncratic to Western populations, suggesting that content moderators may become less effective over time due to being chronically exposed to falsehoods, which could compromise the safety and integrity of online platforms. Accuracy mindset prompts could help, the authors note.
PNAS Nexus
Accuracy prompts protect professional content moderators from the illusory truth effect
19-Nov-2024
Research by G.P. and D.G.R. has been funded by Meta and Google. TaskUs authors are employees of TaskUs. M.S. is an employee of TikTok and was a former employee of TaskUs. D.S. is an employee of Google. G.P. was a Faculty Research Fellow at Google in 2022. D.G.R. is in the PNAS Nexus editorial board.