The narrow reach of targeted corrections: no impact on broader beliefs about election integrity

Abstract

Fact-checks have been shown to be effective in correcting specific false beliefs, but do they also cause people to update their broader views about the phenomenon in question? We consider this question in the context of the 2022 Arizona governor’s race, testing the effect of debunking false claims of fraud on specific beliefs about that election as well as general confidence in the 2022 and 2020 U.S. elections and beliefs about the prevalence of fraud. Our results indicate that fact-checks reduce false beliefs about the election in Arizona, but we find no evidence that participants extrapolate these findings to their general beliefs about fraud or their confidence in the 2022 or 2020 elections. These results suggest that methods of combating misinformation that rely on case-by-case corrections of specific falsehoods may not be effective in changing broader false beliefs.

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