Religious Identity Increases Misinformation Belief in India — Religious Frames Reduce It

Why Religion Might Shape Misinformation Beliefs

Misinformation is often explained by partisan motivated reasoning, but in contexts where religious identity is highly salient, religion itself may drive who accepts false claims. Sumitra Badrinathan and Simon Chauchard investigate whether religiosity and religious polarization help explain why some people endorse misinformation in India, and whether religiously framed corrections can change those beliefs.

What the Authors Did

Badrinathan and Chauchard combine observational evidence from original survey data with a field experiment. First, they document relationships between individuals' levels of religiosity, the degree of religious polarization they face, and their propensity to endorse misinformation. Then they run an experiment that tests two causal levers: providing corrective messages framed in religious terms, and manipulating perceptions of religious ingroup identity.

How the Experiment Worked

• Corrections varied between standard fact-based messages and messages that embedded corrective content in religious language or appeals to shared religious identity.
• The study also experimentally altered respondents' perceptions of whether the misinformation came from a religious ingroup source to test identity effects on receptivity to correction.

Key Findings

• People with higher religiosity and who experience greater religious polarization are more likely to endorse misinformation.
• Corrections that include religious frames reduce endorsement of false claims.
• Religious-frame corrections are, in some cases, more effective than standard fact-based corrections.
• The effects of religiously framed corrections can generalize beyond the single story that was corrected, suggesting spillover benefits for related beliefs.

Why This Matters

These results point to religious identity as an important mechanism shaping misinformation acceptance in multi-religious societies. The findings suggest that identity-informed corrective strategies can be a promising complement to traditional fact-checking—while also raising questions about how identity-based messaging should be used ethically and at scale in diverse societies.