For example, although the harms and benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment are indeed being studied, there is currently no scientific consensus on its effectiveness ( Geleris et al., 2020 Meyerowitz et al., 2020). But misinformation about COVID-19 is not limited to information that is blatantly true or false, which widens the scope of the problem. Fake news about the virus has also been actively promoted by political elites, such as President Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who falsely claimed that hydroxychloroquine is “working in all places” as a treatment against the virus ( Constine, 2020). The video promotes dangerous health advice, for example, falsely suggesting that wearing a mask actually “activates” the coronavirus. The conspiracy film “ Plandemic” appeared online on May 4th of 2020, garnering millions of views and quickly becoming one of the most widespread examples of coronavirus-related misinformation ( Cook et al., 2020). Misinformation about COVID-19 has proliferated widely on social media, ranging from the peddling of fake “cures,” such as gargling with lemon or salt water and injecting yourself with bleach ( World Health Organization, 2020a), to false conspiracy theories that the virus was bioengineered in a lab in Wuhan ( Andersen et al., 2020 Cohen, 2020), or that the 5G cellular network is causing or exacerbating symptoms of COVID-19 ( BBC News, 2020). In this article, we ask three critical questions to help better inform societal response to the infodemic, namely (1) what is the scope and reach of misinformation about COVID-19 in the general population, (2) what evidence is there to suggest that misinformation about the virus is undermining public support for-and the adoption of-preventative health behaviors and (3) how can insights from psychology be leveraged to effectively manage societal response to help limit the spread of influential misinformation? In particular, in order to “immunize” people against the misinformation virus we draw on the theory of psychological inoculation and its real-world application. This makes it harder for people to find trustworthy and reliable information when they need it. In fact, the spread of misleading information about the virus has led the World Health Organization (WHO) to warn of an on-going “infodemic” or an overabundance of information-especially misinformation-during an epidemic ( World Health Organization, 2020b Zarocostas, 2020). In the absence of an effective treatment or vaccine, researchers have pointed out that managing the pandemic response will require leveraging insights from the social and behavioral sciences, particularly with regard to non-pharmaceutical interventions and containing the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 ( Depoux et al., 2020 Habersaat et al., 2020 Van Bavel et al., 2020). The emergence of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in December of 2019 has quickly led to a global pandemic claiming hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide already ( Roser et al., 2020). In particular, we discuss the theory of psychological inoculation (or prebunking) as an efficient vehicle for conferring large-scale psychological resistance against fake news. In response, we explore how insights from the behavioral sciences can be leveraged to manage an effective societal response to curb the spread of misinformation about the virus. We detail the scope of the problem and discuss the negative influence that COVID-19 misinformation can have on the widespread adoption of health protective behaviors in the population. In this article, we explore the coronavirus “infodemic” and how behavioral scientists may seek to address this problem. The outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has been accompanied by a large amount of misleading and false information about the virus, especially on social media.
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