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Social Sciences› Sociology and Political Science› Misinformation and Its Impacts

Misinformation research — Gamified psychological inoculation against misinformation

Submitted 2026-10-22

Field: Social Sciences › Sociology and Political ScienceType: Couldn't replicate a published resultArea: misinformation researchArea: social psychologyTarget: Gamified psychological inoculation against misinformationStage: replication

Hypothesis

A game-based inoculation intervention, repeatedly effective in Western samples, would help people in north India spot and resist misinformation.

What failed

In a randomised controlled trial in north India (n = 757), the intervention had no significant impact on the perceived reliability of misinformation, confidence judgments, or willingness to share information.

Broken assumption

An inoculation game validated in WEIRD samples transfers to a rural, non-Western media environment.

Why

The authors attribute the failure to the difficulty of complex cultural adaptation and of fieldwork in rural areas, and note that misinformation there spreads largely through encrypted messaging apps.

From the published paper: Harjani et al. Journal of Trial and Error, 2023. ↗CC BY

Research ideas from this failure

Unvetted lead — read the papers

New hypotheses this failure suggests, each with a crucial experiment, a rival explanation of the original result, and the papers it rests on. Written by AI from paper titles and abstracts found on OpenAlex (and Europe PMC, for life and health sciences).

Related failures (4)

Matched on shared genes, mechanisms and ways of failing as well as wording. Each shows why it matched — treat these as leads rather than verdicts.

Links in published research

Where this experiment's genes are known to matter outside its own research area, and the papers behind those links. Sources: Open Targets Platform and Europe PMC.