Is There a Better Way to Fight Misinformation?

Source: ChatGPT Image Generator/OpenAI

In today’s information-saturated world, directly correcting false claims is often seen as the go-to strategy for combating misinformation. But what if there’s another, less confrontational approach that can be just as—if not more—effective?

A new study offers insight into a technique called bypassing, which avoids head-on correction and instead highlights truthful, positively framed information. After sharing the study on social media and seeing the strong response it generated, I wanted to dig deeper into what bypassing is, how it works, and when it might be most useful.

What Is Bypassing?

Bypassing is defined as “a response to misinformation that introduces or bolsters nonmutually exclusive alternative beliefs with opposite evaluative implication to that of the misinformation.” In other words, instead of directly countering an inaccurate statement about a topic that someone feels negatively about, you provide a positive and truthful statement on the same topic. For example, if someone claims GMOs (genetically modified organisms) are harmful to consume, you would “bypass” the inaccuracy by focusing on a positive and accurate statement about how GMOs help the bee population.

Through six experiments, the authors of this study found that bypassing is often more effective than simple, direct corrections in countering misinformation. The topics used for misinformation included claims that GMOs, 5G technology, and vaccines were harmful. The researchers assessed participants' attitudes by measuring their support for policies that restricted these topics after exposure to either a simple correction, bypassing, or no correction.

To give you a sense of what bypassing looks like in practice, here's one example they used for vaccine misinformation:

• Misinformation: Aluminum in vaccines causes bone problems.
• Correction: There is no evidence that the levels of aluminum in vaccines cause bone problems.
• Bypassing: The aluminum in vaccines makes vaccines more effective at preventing disease

Participants in the bypassing condition were significantly less likely to support restrictive policies, indicating that bypassing effectively reduced the influence of misinformation on their attitudes. Critically, this outcome measure does not specifically measure change in the inaccurate belief.

What Makes Bypassing More or Less Effective?

While this is still an encouraging result, there is a key limitation of when bypassing can work most effectively. When people form attitudes immediately upon encountering misinformation, bypassing offers no advantage over corrections, and this is likely due to anchoring effects.

An anchoring effect is a cognitive bias where an individual's decisions or evaluations are heavily influenced by an initial piece of information (the "anchor"), even if it is irrelevant or inaccurate. Once the anchor is established, people tend to rely on it as a reference point and make insufficient adjustments away from it, leading to skewed judgments. People who are extremely ideologically committed to a certain belief may also not be as open to bypassing or any other type of fact-check.

Thus, bypassing is a technique to share more positive, truthful statements with someone who may have some skepticism about a topic but is still open to new information.

Ultimately, bypassing is a promising addition to the growing toolbox of evidence-based strategies for addressing misinformation—especially in conversations where direct correction might trigger defensiveness or resistance. It isn’t a silver bullet, and it won’t work in every situation. But in the right context, bypassing offers a way to shift the narrative without escalating conflict.

As we continue to face a flood of misleading and polarizing content, creative, psychologically informed techniques like this may help us communicate more effectively and compassionately.

The study is paywalled and newly published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, but you can read their study materials for free here. Importantly, you can see all of the stimuli they used in their studies.

This article also appears on Misguided: The Newsletter.