General pre-warnings mostly show null effects, but monitoring with susceptibility feedback reduces susceptibility¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study (2 entries) · review r3 · q3
Currency · newest study 2025 · checked against its sources 2026-10-22 (automated, 2 of 2 entries) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Most studies of general pre-warnings found null effects on misinformation susceptibility. → Rau 2025 q3 i? Telling participants their susceptibility would be monitored, especially with negative feedback indicating above-average susceptibility, proved effective. → Rau 2025 (2)

Evidence¶

Rau 2025¶

Rau, M. A., & Premo, A. E. (2025). Systematic Review of Educational Approaches to Misinformation. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10012-8

q3 · i? · review · r3

The review's synthesis of 13 pre-warning articles found "null effects of general warnings based on comparisons to controls", with a misinformation effect occurring despite warnings in several studies; one study found warned participants exhibited a weaker misinformation effect than unwarned ones.

"The results of most studies point towards null effects of general warnings based on comparisons to controls (Bailey et al., 2021; Luke et al., 2017) or because a misinformation effect occurred despite participants having been warned"

Rau 2025 (2)¶

Rau, M. A., & Premo, A. E. (2025). Systematic Review of Educational Approaches to Misinformation. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10012-8

q3 · i? · review · r3

In Salovich and Rapp's approach reviewed here, participants were told their susceptibility would be monitored and received staged feedback; "negative feedback, informing participants that they were more susceptible than average, reduced their susceptibility." Specific warnings showed mixed results across studies.

"Especially negative feedback, informing participants that they were more susceptible than average, reduced their susceptibility."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Deception-cue instructions and facial-expression trainings are largely ineffective at reducing misinformation susceptibility — related
• Comprehensive information-literacy curricula yield mixed results on misinformation detection — related
• Retrieval practice mostly increases susceptibility to misinformation (retrieval-enhanced suggestibility) — related
• Explicit attention-focusing and discrepancy-detection interventions largely reduce susceptibility; mindfulness interventions do not — related