Counteracting Narratives

Evidence from An Online Experiment

Bibliographic Data

ID9703593
AuthorsManwei Liu (Nanjing Audit University), Sili Zhang (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Year2025
Publication date2025-05-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ej/ueaf038
OpenAlexW4410382972
LanguageEN
References cited78

Can people counteract biased narratives with subsequent information? Using an online experiment where counteracting may have the best odds by design, we investigate this question by first randomly assigning subjects to read different narratives that contain the same facts, and then offering them the opportunity to acquire and process balanced arguments. We document three main findings. First, subjects shift their attitudes towards the standpoint of the randomly assigned narrative, knowing that the narrative is slanted and randomly assigned. Second, the opportunity to read additional arguments does not prompt subjects to counteract the persuasion effects of the initial narratives. Third, when evaluating subsequent arguments, participants find arguments aligned with the randomly assigned narrative more convincing. These findings remain qualitatively similar in additional treatments where the balanced arguments are provided two weeks after initial exposure to narratives. Only when we replace these arguments with the exact opposing narratives that subjects do not initially see are they able to fully counteract the effects. Taken together, our results highlight the importance of balanced and complete exposure at the outset in counteracting the influence of biased narratives

Art · Business · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Media Influence and Politics · Misinformation and Its Impacts · Psychology

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