Don’t correct, bypass

With misinformation running rampant, it becomes ever more important for people to identify strategies to address it. The standard response is to want to correct the misinformation. However, as we’ve seen, this often doesn’t have the impact we want. A more recent recommendation is to bypass the misinformation. When you bypass misinformation you “introduce different, nonmutually exclusive beliefs whose implications are opposite to that of the conclusion of the misinformation” (Samayoa & Albarracin, 2025, p. 19). I think an example is helpful to actually understand this.

In the study, participants were put into one of three conditions control, correction, or bypass. The misinformation in each was the same, “The chemical TSF causes anxiety.” The control group was then presented with an unrelated piece of information, “City council approves bike lane.” The correction group was presented with the correction, “The chemical TSF does not cause anxiety.” The bypass group was presented with different information about TSF that has positive implications: “The chemical TSF improves immune function.” The three groups were then asked questions to examine their attitude and intention to act regarding policies relating to the use of the chemical TSF. (TSF is a fictitious chemical.)

The results of multiple experiments show that both correction and bypassing can impact attitudes and weaken support for policies focused on preventing the use of the chemical, but bypassing had a slightly stronger influence on both. I would like to see a next step for this research that looks at misinformation that the individual holds rather than misinformation that is presented to them. Presumably, there isn’t much time in these studies for the misinformation to take hold. But what happens if you use the bypassing approach when someone presents their own misinformation? The challenge is greater for the communicator in this case as they would need to be able to respond on the fly to whatever the person said, but I want to know if it would have a similar benefit. Then, perhaps there could be collaboration to identify bypass statements for common misinformation about issues like climate change and vaccinations.

Lots of potential for this research for sure, I hope to see it carried into more real-life settings soon.