Misinformation Fuels Out‑Group Hostility, Corrections Often Fail

Why This Question Matters

Political science has focused heavily on whether citizens believe misinformation and how to correct factual errors, but less is known about how misinformation reshapes social attitudes—whether it increases dislike or distrust of rival groups and deepens polarization. Ursula Daxecker, Hanne Fjelde, and Neeraj Prasad investigate whether exposure to false or misleading claims can produce affective shifts that make people more hostile to out-groups, and whether factual corrections can reverse those shifts.

Field Setting and Research Design

The authors run a preregistered vignette experiment in West Bengal, India, conducted after the 2021 state elections. The experiment exposes respondents to a misinformation message that invokes salient identity cleavages and embeds the false claim within a broader narrative of threat from an out-group. The design randomly varies whether respondents answer questions about intergroup attitudes before or after exposure to the misinformation, allowing the authors to measure short-term changes in affective attitudes associated with exposure. The study also assesses whether corrective information reduces any observed negative effects.

Key Findings

• Exposure to the misinformation vignette increases respondents’ reported hostility toward the targeted out-group compared to those not exposed.
• Presenting corrective information does not meaningfully reduce these negative attitude shifts, suggesting corrections fail to undo the affective impact of the misinformation.
• The pattern implies that the effect operates through emotional or narrative channels rather than solely by changing factual beliefs. The authors further argue that when politicians embed misinformation inside larger threat narratives, those political frames can amplify the movement from misinformation to social cleavage.

Implications for Research and Policy

These results indicate that combating misinformation may require more than fact-checks: when false claims are tied to identity-based narratives, they can change social feelings toward groups in ways that resist simple factual correction. For scholars of polarization and political communication, the study highlights the importance of affective pathways and elite framing in the spread and social consequences of misinformation.