Work

Debunking health misinformation with empathy

Year: 2025

Type: review

Abstract: Debunking is an effective means to mitigate the impact of health misinformation. However, even after receiving a corrective message, misinformation often persists in influencing individuals' judgements and decision-making. I review evidence on effective components of debunking in health contexts and propose three mechanisms for how expressions of empathy might help reduce the continued influence of health misinformation. Empathetic debunkings might decrease feelings of discomfort and increase believability of debunkings by (1) decreasing perceived threat to underlying attitude roots, (2) decreasing perceived threat to face or (3) increasing perceptions of trustworthiness. Moreover, I review pitfalls of using empathetic communication that should be considered by practitioners and further investigated in research addressing empathy to tackle misinformation.

Source: Current Opinion in Psychology

DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2025.102213

Author: Philipp Schmid

Institutions: Radboud University Nijmegen, University of Erfurt, Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine

Language: English

Topic: Misinformation and Its Impacts

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $4,260